


give me a heart unburdened

by polarkai



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Marine Corps, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23283778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polarkai/pseuds/polarkai
Summary: Alex leaves the marines with a purple heart, a metal arm, and no idea what to do next. Desperate for an easier transition back to civilian life, she joins a support group, expecting nothing more than stale coffee, a headache, and pity.She never expected Lena.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 100
Kudos: 478





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello its me, writing another wip in the midst of a giant pile of wips. hope y'all enjoy

i don't pay attention to the world ending.

it has ended for me many times and began again in the morning.

― _salt,_ nayyirah waheed.

* * *

Alex leaves the marines with a purple heart, a metal arm, and no idea what to do next. 

Lucy and Vasquez are both dead or gone, and with J'onn still on base, there’s no one to really… _go_ to. She has Maggie, sure, but things have been tense between them even long before she was discharged. It’s almost a dreadful thing to think about, going home to her angry, disappointed fiance, so she doesn’t. 

She calls Kara instead. 

It seems different than the last time she was back in the states, on a temporary leave to attend Lucy's funeral in D.C. National City is awash with light and color, a stark contrast to the dull beige deserts she’s grown accustomed to over the past decade. The sidewalks are cluttered with people talking and rushing to different destinations, paying no heed to her and Kara as they push past them. 

The buildings stretched across downtown are lit up with flashy Christmas decor, bright and festive, and Alex pauses by one of the large window shops to look at an animatronic Frosty the Snowman waving at her through the glass. 

“Alex,” Kara calls out, and she tears her eyes away and hurries to catch up. 

“You’re going to be in my room, and I can just sleep on the couch! It’s not the best set up, but―” her sister rambles as they enter the large studio apartment. It’s too bright, too colorful, and it fits Kara just right. The windows are big, taking up what should be two walls, overlooking the city below, glimmering in the night. 

“It’s loud, I know. I’m sorry,” Kara grimaces in sympathy when she sees the look on Alex’s face, and― shit. Had she been too obvious with it, or is Kara still able to read her that well?

“No, no, Kara, it’s great. Really. Thank you, I...“ A shuddering breath, “I really appreciate it.”

“Have you talked to Maggie?” Kara asks gently, cautiously, because it’s been a sore spot for a few months now. The last time she’d talked to her fiancé, it was through a glitchy skype call while she was in South Korea, and they’d fought nearly the whole call before Alex was pulled away by an emergency within the camp. 

She rubs the back of her neck at the thought of it, how tense it’s been between them. “Yeah. She knows I’m staying here, and she’s not happy, but— we’re talking.” 

Kara nods in understanding. “I’ll get you some blankets!” 

She washes up as Kara makes her bed. The water feels cool and refreshing against her skin, and she runs her hand down her face, breathing in the scent of lilac from Kara’s face wash as she takes in the tired, bloodshot eyes staring back at her. 

She had always looked more like her father. 

It’s something Eliza had always told her. She had his warm brown eyes and his crooked smile, and even the faintest trail of freckles scattered across his nose. She sees it now as she stares into the mirror above the sink, the uncanny resemblance. 

Her grip on the medicine cabinet wavers, the door slamming shut with a bang, and Alex winces automatically at the noise, feeling like her nervous system has suddenly gone into overdrive. It’s not the first time it’s happened, the smallest fucking sound sending her back there, and it’s probably not going to be her last.

“Alex?” It’s Kara’s two knuckles rapping on the bathroom door. “Are you—“ 

“Fine,” she cuts her sister off, though her throat feels dry and prickly when she speaks. She dries her hands and wrenches the door open, coming face-to-face with her sister. “I’m fine, Kara.” 

Two arms wrap around her middle, a warm body pressed against hers before she can blink. “I’m so glad you’re home,” Kara whispers, pressing her face in Alex’s shoulder. “I missed you so much.” 

Alex’s eyes slip shut as she hugs Kara back even tighter. “I missed you too, Kara.” 

She doesn’t sleep well that night; or any night, really. She tosses and turns, wakes in a cold sweat most mornings, screaming loud enough to prompt a concerned Kara to check on her. 

The war plagues her, the blood on her hands, the smell of gunpowder and death still lingering. Transitioning from military life to civilian life is a jarring thing, Alex realizes, only a week in. It’s like she’s not cut out for it, gotten so used to active duty that she’s almost forgotten how to _not_ be a soldier. It doesn’t help that she has a permanent, constant reminder of what she’d lost, either.

 _You should go to therapy, Alex,_ her mother pleads, after an incident nearly leaves Kara with a broken wrist. _It worked for your father―_

But, no. _No._ She doesn’t need therapy; she’s a grown woman, and she can get through this herself, without a shrink psycho-analyzing her for an hour every week. 

She’ll be _fine._

* * *

She has good days and bad days, and it’s on one of the good days that she realizes: recovery is a funny thing. 

Alex lies on her back in bed and thinks, and this is the conclusion she draws. Recovery works on so many different levels, in so many different ways, and it relies on such a variation of factors that she can’t even begin to list them all. It’s a funny thing, but strange.

Not that she can say she’s _recovered,_ really; not yet, at least. Her leg still twinges when she puts too much weight on it, and there’s metal in certain parts of her body that aches when it’s cold outside. She’s still getting used to writing with her left hand instead of her right, and phantom pain, Alex has learned over the course of two months, is a very, _very_ real thing. 

She’s reminded of this as she rolls over in bed, a sharp, burning sensation shooting up the arm that’s no longer there, leaving her grimacing. 

“You okay?” It’s Maggie, her voice a whisper in the dark, and Alex breathes in deeply through her nose as she sits up, the covers pooling around her waist. “Alex?” 

“I’m fine,” she bites out, harsher than she means to. “Just go back to sleep.”

Maggie doesn’t say a word in response. Alex feels the bed move as she rolls over, her back towards her. 

The engagement to Maggie isn’t something Alex had _planned_ , per say. It’s something that just kind of… happened, in the midst of war and the risk of dying and the terrifying reality that she may never have something to hold onto when she gets back home. It’s a desperate attempt to ground herself to the kind of life everyone thinks she deserves, and that’s all, really. Convenience. 

But she doesn’t expect it to hurt so much, when it ends— _inevitably._

A month after moving out of Kara’s apartment and into her own, it’s Maggie who wakes her from her nightmare one night; and it’s Maggie’s throat that Alex’s hands wrap around as soon as she jolts awake, her mind still back at war, fear gripping her heart. It’s only when she registers terrified brown eyes staring back at her that she realizes she’s no longer in the midst of a war, and the throat she’s squeezing is not an enemy’s.

“Oh, God, Mags―” she chokes out as her fiance staggers back, clutching at her throat, eyes watering. “Maggie, I didn’t― I’m so sorry, I―” 

Maggie shakes her head, holding her arms out, but Alex lurches away from her embrace. “No, Alex, it’s okay! You were dreaming. You were dreaming,” she insists, but Alex can’t calm down, letting out panicked, choked sobs into her hands. 

Maggie has bruises on her neck for days afterwards, and Alex tries hard to avoid looking at them, to avoid dwelling on the harsh reality that it was her who put them there. And that’s the beginning of the end for them; it only gets worse after the first incident, their relationship _and_ Alex’s mental state. Maggie ends things three weeks before the wedding, the engagement ring Alex had got her sitting cold on the table. She makes it a personal rule to always sleep alone, after that. 

After the break-up, she finds solace in the gym around the corner from her apartment, an old, rundown place that rarely anyone goes to. She comes upon it by accident one night, stumbling home from a trip to the bar following a visit to Kara downtown. That's where J’onn finds her eventually, throwing punch after punch at a heavy bag, the gym quiet save for the rattling of chains and her fist hitting the bag. She doesn't look at him at first as she drops down on a bench and unwraps a sore, shaking hand, tossing the tape into her duffel bag and wiping the sweat from her forehead. 

“J’onn,” she sighs, melting into the embrace the older man pulls her in. “Hey. When did you get back?” 

“A few weeks ago,” J’onn answers, sheepishly almost. The last time she saw him, they were sitting in the VA hospital as Alex got a metal rod in her leg and fitting after fitting for a prosthetic. He had flown back to base, after her discharge, and Alex had gone to Kara’s.

“How have you been, Alex?” 

She hesitates in answering. J’onn stares at her as she runs her hands through sweat-soaked hair, brushing it away from her face and avoiding eye contact. “It's hard, isn't it?” he asks, leaning against the wall next to her. “You come back and just feel lost, like everyone has moved on without you. Like you have no place here anymore.” 

Alex can’t help but nod in agreement. “Mom and Kara are worried about me,” she explains, shrugging a shoulder. “I hate doing that to them, you know? Making them worry.” 

J’onn nods. “They have a right to worry. If you’re ever interested, I’m hosting a group at Saint Matthew’s Church a few minutes outside the city.” You should come, Alex. It could be good for you to hear similar experiences. To know you’re not alone.” 

Alex grimaces almost immediately. “Church? J’onn, you of all people know I’m not exactly a prime candidate for conversion,” she starts to say, but J’onn holds a hand up, stopping her.

“It’s nothing like that, I assure you. Just a place to gather. It could help you,” he insists. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”

The thought makes Alex feel weird— _weak,_ almost, at the prospect. But she doesn’t say this to J’onn. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe.” 

Later that night, though, his suggestion haunts her.

Its fucking _annoying,_ because she doesn’t want to give into her mothers insistent pleas, but this is _J’onn_ — and she never was able to refuse him, was she? Even before she trusted him with her life, literally, it had been hard to look straight in his eyes and say a simple _no._

“I think you should at least try it,” Kara tells her when she goes to her for advice, words muffled as she digs into the donuts Alex had brought with her. 

She messes with her own donut, taking her time picking apart little bite-sized chunks before answering. “It doesn’t— make me weak?” 

Kara’s eyes grow wide. “Weak? Alex, no! Why do you think that?” 

Alex shrugs a shoulder. She remembers how helpless she’d felt after her father’s death, when Eliza had forced her to go to grief counseling; and when she’d been in physical therapy for her leg, rehab for her arm. Tackling vulnerability without feeling sick to her stomach had never been her strong suit, and this is no different. 

“Please try it? For me?” 

And, well, shit. It’s hard enough to say no to J’onn, but to Kara? Kara, with her infamous puppy dog eyes and pleading pout? Alex might as well have already said yes.

The group meeting turns out to be in the basement of the church J’onn had told her about. The air is musty when she walks in, the stairs creaking beneath her feet, and she wraps her jacket tighter around herself as she enters the small room.

She’s early, almost twenty minutes so, but there’s already a fair amount of people in the room. She spots J’onn immediately, talking quietly with a couple of people near the snack table in the corner, and waves awkwardly. He meets her eyes above someone’s head and smiles warmly, welcoming, arms stretched out to embrace her as he excuses himself from the small group of people. 

“I’m so glad you decided to come, Alex.”

Alex melts into his hug. “I might as well try, right?”

As soon as the room fills with the scraping of seats and quiet chatter as more people filter in, J’onn busies himself with setting up the chairs in a circle. Alex wanders towards the snack table, grabbing a styrofoam cup to pour what’s likely to be the shittiest coffee in the world into. 

This whole thing reads like a straight up AA meeting. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you. The coffee is always stale here.” 

The voice behind her leaves her startled for a second, and she whirls around to come face-to-face with a pretty brunette, sharp green eyes staring down at her. The woman looks more out of place than anyone, in a dark burgundy suit and tall stilettos, a soft smile in the form of two dark red lips. She looks like she should be anywhere but here, a musty, run-down church basement on the outskirts of National City. 

“Yeah, I kind of figured,” Alex shrugs, trying to act nonchalant. The woman just raises an eyebrow, reaching around her to grab what is most likely a stale donut as well. Sure enough, when she taps it against the edge of the table, it’s as hard as a rock, and they share a look of mild disgust. 

“The newcomers always make that mistake, don’t they,” the woman says matter-of-factly, almost to herself. She holds out a perfectly manicured hand for Alex to shake. “Lena Luthor, though you probably already know that.” 

Alex shifts awkwardly, trying to rack her brain for any indication that she’s met this woman before now. “Uh, should I?” 

Lena stares at her, and the corner of her lips quirk up slightly as she tilts her head, inquisitive. “Oh, I wasn’t aware of your living situation.” 

“My—”

“You must live under a rock, I assume?” she asks, not unkindly, but Alex reels back at the question, blinking hard. Lena seems to find amusement in this, lips quirked up slightly before she composes herself. “I’m teasing you, of course.” 

Alex breathes out, relieved. “Oh. I just, I haven’t been in National City in a while. Or the United States in general, actually.” 

“Well, I guess I should properly introduce myself then,” Lena smiles. “Lena Luthor, CEO of L-Corp.” 

“L-Corp?” It sounds vaguely familiar, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. 

“I inherited the corporation from my brother a few years back, after moving to National City. It specializes in cybernetics, nano-technology, synthetic biology— the works.” 

Had Kara ever mentioned L-Corp to her before? Alex can’t remember. Most of her communication with her sister over the past few years, like with Maggie, had been done through a semi-glitchy skype session for a few minutes at a time, and there’s not exactly a lot Kara rambles about that Alex can keep up with. She rubs her neck, fingers toying with the slightly grown-out strands of hair at the back of her head. 

“I didn’t quite catch your name?” Lena seems to realize, and Alex’s eyes widen. 

“Oh, right! Uh— Alex Danvers.” She shifts her weight. She looks back as the others start taking their seats around the circle, and catches J’onn’s eye across the room. He’s watching her and Lena’s interaction carefully, and she clears her throat as she turns back to Lena. “We should, uh…” 

Without saying anything, Lena steps back to let her pass, and Alex shuffles towards the circle awkwardly, feeling eyes on her the whole way. “Alright,” J’onn starts as she settles quietly in one of the empty seats to his right. “Would anyone like to be the first to share?” 

Alex tries to ignore the feeling of J’onn’s eyes on her. She’s not here to speak, to share her ‘story’ and what brought her here. She’s here to appease her family. To listen and to observe and _not_ share. 

“Alex?” he asks softly, but Alex shakes her head immediately, avoiding the sudden onslaught of eyes looking towards her. She shifts awkwardly in her seat and clears her throat. 

“Uh— Nope, I’m good. Thanks.” A beat of silence, then, “Anyone else?” 

“I’ll go,” someone from across from her pipes up, and Alex sinks down into her seat, blowing out a relieved breath. 

Throughout most of the group session, she listens to her fair share of alcoholics and drug addicts, those who’ve lost parents or siblings, and even the occasional sex addict from a few frat-boys sitting beside her. There’s nothing too unexpected that arises within the group, and by the time the clock strikes seven, Alex is fidgeting restlessly in her seat, wanting nothing more than to just _leave._

It’s only halfway through one of the alcoholic’s turns that Alex begins to grow uneasy, the hair at the back of her neck standing up. 

There’s someone watching her. 

Her eyes shoot up, and upon scanning the room, immediately makes contact with Lena’s— who, rather than being embarrassed by being caught, simply smirks her way before looking back towards the man speaking. “I’d like to go next, J’onn,” one of the frat-boy looking males pipes up, rubbing his sweaty palms on his jeans.

“Alright,” J’onn nods in encouragement, crossing his arms and sitting back to give the man his undivided attention. “Go ahead.” 

Unlike everybody else, the man rises from his chair and stands in the center of the circle to speak _,_ and Alex nearly scoffs aloud without meaning to. _Great._ There’s already someone here that she hates. “I’m Mike, for those of you who somehow don’t know,” he starts. “And I… I lost my cat a few weeks ago.” 

_Oh, God._ This time, she can’t help the scoff that escapes, her eyes nearly rolling back in her head. “It was hard,” Mike continues, and the hatred for him only grows. “I’d had him for almost two years before he passed—“ 

Lena catches Alex’s attention again a few minutes after that, and before anyone else can notice, she pulls a face at Mike’s words, almost as if saying, _‘what a tool.’_ Alex’s shoulders shake in a silent laugh as she makes a face back, rolling her eyes again.

“Lena!” J’onn looks right at her, startling most in the circle. Alex hadn’t even realized Mike was done speaking. “We haven’t heard from you yet. Why don’t you close us out?” 

The woman tears her eyes away from Alex and looks at J’onn, dread immediately overcoming her features. It seems like she’d known this would happen, and Alex sympathizes with her for a moment as J’onn smiles passively at her. Alex can’t help but try to guess what she could be here for. _Drug addict? Alcoholic?_

“Right. Well, I’m Lena,” she introduces herself to the group. “Most of you already know why I’m here, but for those of you who don’t, I’m here because—“ 

_Sex addict? God forbid, a dead dog?_

“—six months ago, I shot my psychopathic, homicidal brother in the chest and killed him.” 

* * *

Lena is standing in front of the church, suit jacket held tightly against herself, a lit cigarette dangling from between dark lips when Alex steps out into the frigid night air with J’onn. 

“I’m really glad you came,” J’onn tells her again as he hugs her goodbye, squeezing her shoulders. She smiles as she pulls away. “Why don’t we grab lunch sometime this week?” 

“Yeah, definitely,” she agrees, and then watches as he descends the church steps to get in his car. Her own motorcycle sits in the parking lot a few feet away, but she lingers for some reason, watching Lena out of the corner of her eye. 

“You know J’onn personally, then?” 

Alex blinks. Lena is watching her right back, apparently, taking slow drags of her cigarette, exhaling the smoke from her nose. “What?” 

She gestures towards where he’d just driven off from. “You two hugged, so I’m only assuming he means more to you than the one who sets up these meetings.” 

“Oh, yeah. Right.” She finds herself shuffling closer to Lena as she answers. “He’s an old family friend. He kind of convinced me to come here in the first place, actually. Thought it’d help.” 

“You didn’t speak up,” Lena points out. “I admit, I was looking forward to hearing what you have to say.” 

“My dog died,” Alex deadpans. “It really took a toll.” 

Lena huffs out a laugh as she flicks her cigarette on the ground and grinds it into the concrete. “You’ll get used to that eventually. There’s always one.” 

“Oh, great,” Alex mutters. 

For a few long seconds, silence settles over them, and it’s _awkward._ Alex doesn’t really know what to say to Lena after hearing her speak in group, and it’s not like she knows her well enough to carry on much of a conversation anyways. Alex has always been bad at that. 

"So, were you in the marines? Navy?" Lena prompts out of nowhere, and Alex is confused for a good moment before Lena motions towards the dog tags still hanging around her neck by a rusted chain. "Don't tell me you're coast guard." 

Despite herself, Alex huffs out a light laugh at that. She hadn’t planned to talk about her deployment to anyone tonight, but now that Lena’s asked, she finds herself explaining anyways. "Yeah, marines, actually. Just finished my last tour in Iraq." 

Lena nods. “An ex of mine served. That's why you’re here then?” 

Alex breathes in sharply, eyebrows furrowing, and Lena seems to realize that’s the wrong thing to ask, because even through the dark, Alex catches the bright red tint of her cheeks in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry,” she apologizes quickly, “I shouldn’t have asked that. That was completely inconsiderate of me.” 

“No, no, it’s— you’re fine. Trust me, it’s not the worst anyone’s said to me since I got back,” Alex raises a hand to stop her from apologizing even more. Still, Lena looks like she wishes she’d be swallowed up by the ground as soon as possible, and Alex looks away, towards her bike. “I should get going. I kinda promised my sister I’d facetime with her when I got home, so…” 

Lena nods slowly, lips tightly pursed. “I’ll see you next week?” 

Alex shifts slightly, rubbing the back of her neck. “Uh, yeah, maybe. I don’t know if I’m coming back yet.”

“Right, of course," Lena answers, and then snaps her mouth shut, as if to keep herself from saying anything more. Alex feels green eyes on her the entire walk across the parking lot. 

Despite herself, she ends up going back the next week. It’s almost an uncontrollable pull that brings her back to the run-down church, something unknown that drags her through the doors and down the stairs to the musty, dull basement. She sees some of the same people from the week before, unfortunately including the frat boy grieving over his cat, but more specifically, she sees _Lena,_ helping J’onn unfold chairs and position them in a circle like last time. 

When Lena catches her eye, she smiles. Alex watches her lean over the J’onn and say something before setting the last chair down and stalking over, heels clanking against the dusty wooden floor. “You’re back,” she greets with a small smile. “I must say, I’m impressed.” 

Alex raises her eyebrows. “Impressed?” 

“You’d be surprised how many venture in here for a one-and-done session before vanishing into thin air after hearing some of the… well, let’s be frank here, _ignorant_ speakers in the group.”

 _Vanish into thin air._ She was tempted; oh, was she tempted. J’onn had only asked her to try it out, and that’s what she’d done, right? She could’ve easily just forgotten about this whole thing, stayed at home with a glass of bourbon and a good documentary. 

“Look,” Lena says, drawing her out of her thoughts, and suddenly there’s a warm hand on her forearm, soft eyes on hers. “I want to apologize again, for the last time we spoke. I feel like I overstepped, and I shouldn’t have said anything about it.” 

Alex has to force her eyes away from the hand on her arm to look up and meet Lena’s eyes. “No, hey, I said it’s fine, and it— it really is.” 

Lena’s tongue darts out to lick at her lips. “Alright, good. I’d hate to have made a bad first impression on you.” 

“Trust me, you’re probably one of the only people here that I can stand.” And she’s only half-joking, casting a glare towards Mike in particular, and Lena chuckles. 

“Like I said, you’ll get used to it eventually,” Lena reminds her, before stalking off with a smile and taking her seat in the circle. Alex finds herself sitting beside J’onn again, looking out at some new faces and some from the last session, and she can only hope this time goes by quicker than her first.

It doesn’t. 

By the time she’s exiting the church, lingering behind the others so that she’s one of the last to come out, she feels even worse than she did before. 

Apparently Lena feels the same, because she’s leaned up against one of the pews, legs crossed and eyes closed, smoking just as she had been the first time Alex met her. She looks exhausted, and a little annoyed, which, okay, is _fair_ considering some of the stories they’d been forced to listen to over the past hour.

“Do you always smoke after these things?” she asks as she steps up beside Lena, catching a whiff of smoke and what Alex can only describe as a flowery, rich-people perfume. “That's a pretty bad habit, you know."

Lena glances at her out of the corner of her eye, smirking slightly. “I'm not proud of it, but it helps.” She shrugs a shoulder, taking another drag as if to prove her indifference. “Besides, I could die tomorrow or I could die in the next five years, and I'm pretty certain it won't be because of lung cancer."

Alex can only tilt her head in a way that just says _well, you got a point there,_ tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek to school her expression. "Guess you're right."

Lena flashes her a smug smile. “Of course I'm right,” she replies confidently, before stepping back and waving in a kind of two-finger salute. “Have a good night, Alex.” 

“Yeah, you too, Lena.” 

She watches as Lena strides away, cigarette flicking onto the ground on her way across the parking lot, and she can only shake her head. 

It's after the third night of group that Alex is walking out, trying to text Kara and keep from tripping down the church steps at the same time, when a voice rings out in the dark, “Are you a fan of scotch?” 

It's Lena, Alex recognizes the voice before she even turns around to face the woman, and with the most random question she could’ve asked in the moment, no less. Alex cocks an eyebrow. “It’s my go-to,” she answers truthfully, anyways.

“Good,” Lena nods, and suddenly there’s a hand wrapping around her elbow; even though it’s her prosthetic Lena is holding, Alex swears she feels a jolt go up her arm at the contact anyways. “We’re going out for a drink.” 

Alex blinks. This is… weird. Sure, they've made a few faces at each other across the circle here and there, spoken a few words to each other afterwards, but to go out for drinks together outside of group? It's fucking _weird._ “Do you usually make plans with people without consulting them, or—“ 

“I asked if you liked scotch, didn’t I?” is Lena’s reply, and, well, Alex can’t really argue. She _did,_ after all. 

The bar they end up at is loud and bright and full of people, nothing like the ones Alex would venture into with Lucy and Vas back on base. It’s an upscale bar, that much she can tell by taking a quick look around at the leather couches and live musicians playing in the back. She feels underdressed, in her beat-up leather jacket and ripped jeans, compared to the customers in pressed suits and tight, sparkly dresses.

Alex hates it. 

To be fair, she’d hate the bars back on base too, if she was being dragged into one by a complete stranger with, well— a little bit more than just a complicated relationship with her brother. She’s already on the verge of being tipsy; the world around her is blurry, at best, and she can feel the warmth in her chest with each sip of whiskey she takes, the amber liquid sloshing around in her glass. Lena, sitting beside her with her legs crossed, has already started flagging down the bartender for more rounds. 

“Lex wasn’t a fan of drinking,” she says. It’s the first thing of substance either of them has said in the last thirty minutes. “He hated when I came here.” 

“My fiance wasn’t, either,” Alex says, surprising even herself. It’s been a hot minute since she’s even let herself think about Maggie since the break-up, and even now, it sends a sharp pain straight to her heart, like she’s being stabbed in the chest with a rusty knife. It doesn’t help that a new wave of fresh guilt washes over her at the reminder of _why_ they ended things. 

“Fiance?” Lena inquires, a dark brow cocked. “You didn’t tell me you were engaged.” 

Alex shakes her head, quickly replacing the pain of guilt with the pleasant burn of whiskey. “Not anymore. It’s, uh— hard for me to talk about,” Alex tells her, and Lena nods sympathetically as she sips idly at her drink. “She was my first girlfriend. Most of our relationship was long distance, with me being deployed and her back here, and— it didn’t end well.” 

“Mind if I ask why not?” 

“I choked her in my sleep.” And, yeah, she’s definitely drunk, if she’s unloading her baggage onto a complete stranger she met three weeks ago. To her surprise though, Lena doesn’t even bat an eye. If anything, she takes a bigger sip of her scotch before setting it down, wrapping her hands around the glass. 

“Right,” she says, nodding slowly, _understanding._ “Well, that can surely be a deal-breaker for some, I suppose.” 

Alex huffs out a bitter laugh, grinding the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.” Then, breathing in deeply, she admits, “I… haven’t let myself sleep with someone since. Too afraid of hurting them like I did her.” 

“Why don’t you practice it?” Lena suggests, completely serious.

Alex frowns at her. “What, like, choke someone? No thanks.” 

Lena rolls her eyes. “No, you fool,” she snaps, already exasperated. “Practice _sleeping_ with someone. Or even, if it’s necessary, practice being intimate with them. Learn how to be vulnerable with them in a way you haven’t been privy to in years.” 

It almost sounds like Lena has been through this before, and Alex is dying to ask the question, but Lena seems to recognize her burning curiosity, because she answers it for her. “I helped an old friend of mine with the same issue after she went through something traumatic herself. It worked for her. Perhaps it could work for you.”

Still, Alex scoffs into her drink. “Yeah? And how would I even find someone willing to—”

“You can practice with me.” 

Alex’s head snaps over to look at her, to gauge if she’s really serious, and she nearly drops the glass in her hand. “I— what?” 

Lena turns around fully in her seat now, staring at her. “I said, you can practice on me,” she repeats, but Alex’s drunk, foggy brain still struggles to catch up to what she’s saying. “I’m not fragile, and I’ve been through worse than a simple choke-hold. You won’t hurt me.” 

Alex swallows, her throat tight. “You don’t know that,” she says, but Lena rolls her eyes. 

“Please. You don’t know my brother,” she scoffs, leaning closer to Alex, close enough that Alex catches a strong whiff of the perfume she’s wearing. “You don’t want to hurt someone you love, so why not practice on a stranger?” 

“Practice… sleeping with you?” 

Lena shrugs. “Yes,” she says, like it’s obvious, and not at all crazy.

Alex leans back in her seat, clutching her glass, eyebrows furrowed. Lena just shrugs again. “If you’re not comfortable with it, then forget I even made the suggestion,” she tells her honestly, a soft, genuine smile gracing her face. “And we can remain nothing more than occasional drinking buddies.”

And, okay, this is even more weird, and she’s never even heard of anything like this, but Alex’s head says one thing and her mouth says another. “Okay. Okay, yeah, I guess… I can try that.” 

Lena’s smile widens. “Great,” she says, and then pulls a pen and notepad out of seemingly nowhere, which makes Alex blink in confusion. “Here’s the number for my personal phone, and here’s the one for my office phone. Call either, but make sure to list your name, title, and your reason for calling, or Jess won’t put you through.” 

Alex grinds her teeth nervously. “Jess?” 

“My assistant,” Lena tells her casually, as she finishes scribbling down both numbers. “I really hope to hear from you, Alex.” 

* * *

It takes her a week to call. She stares at her phone like it’s a bomb that could go off at any moment, fingers hovering over the buttons, an odd feeling in her chest. Has it always been this difficult to make a simple phone call? 

She looks around her apartment; she’d already cleaned up, not that there was much to do, anyways. Unlike her messy teenage years, spending more than a decade in the military taught her to never leave her bed unmade, or have clothes strewn around the place. She’d spent at least half the evening tidying up her room in preparation, despite having cleaned up almost five times already; each time she double-checked, it was like she found something new to be swept up, or straightened out, or tossed away. 

Her thumb hovers over the call button. She’s already typed the number of Lena’s personal cell phone in, and now all she has to do, really, is press _call_. But she hesitates. 

She ends up video-calling Kara in a panic instead, and the first words to come out of her sister’s mouth after explaining the situation are: “Alex, what the hell?” 

Kara Danvers rarely curses; she’s too good and innocent for it, and this is why Alex reels back, wondering if it’s really her sister she called. It is, and she coughs nervously. “It’s not a big deal, Kara,” she tries to assure her, but Kara is having none of it. 

“You’re crazy for even considering this!” 

Alex purses her lips, running a hand through her hair, doubtful. “Am I, though?” 

There’s a beat of silence as Kara stares at her. Then, “... _Yes,_ Alex. You are.” 

“She said it might help me.”

“Of course she’s going to say that,” Kara argues. “I told you to try group therapy out, not to have sex with some random stranger.”

“We’re not having _sex._ We’re just sleeping together.” At Kara’s aghast expression on the screen, she cringes at herself. That’s not exactly the best way to explain. “I mean, literally _sleeping_ together. No sex involved. Just… just some napping. And cuddling, I don’t know.” 

“Cuddling,” Kara echoes flatly. “Alex, if you wanted to cuddle, you could’ve just asked me.” 

“Not like that,” Alex insists, feeling frustrated as she paces around the kitchen. “This is more of a—” 

“—a sex thing,” Kara supplies unhelpfully, and Alex rubs at her eyes, blowing out an exasperated breath. 

“It’s _not_ sex!” 

She hangs up fairly quickly after that, not willing to hear her sister yell at her through the phone much longer, and types in Lena’s phone number again. She chews on her bottom lip. This _is_ crazy, isn’t it? She’s being fucking crazy. Twelve years in the marines and she’s naive enough to invite a complete stranger into her home to, what, to _sleep?_ She’s being an absolute idiot, an undeniable _dumbass—_

“L-Corp, this is Jess, how can I help you?” 

Shit, she’d called Lena’s work phone by mistake? Alex stammers for a second, trying to remember what Lena had told her to say. “Uh— Alex Danvers, I’m calling for Lena Luthor… We have an, um, appointment?” She cringes at herself. _Appointment? That’s what you’re calling it, Danvers?_

“Just one moment,” Jess tells her, and then there’s silence for a second before light music filters through the speakers. “Ah, yes, she mentioned you’d be calling. I’ll transfer you.”

Alex scowls. Lena had mentioned this beforehand? Like she just _knew?_

“Hello, Alex.” 

“You just assumed I’d be calling?” Alex says immediately, still scowling as she takes a seat on the kitchen counter. “Are you that full of yourself, that you think I’d actually take you up on this?” 

For a long, terrifying moment, Lena doesn’t say anything. Then, after a click of a tongue, “And yet… you called, did you not?” 

Alex purses her lips. Shit, Lena’s got her there. “I mean— well, _yes,_ but— that’s not the point!” 

She tries to ignore the warm embarrassment that floods her cheeks when she hears Lena chuckling over the line. “Well, nevertheless, I’m glad I’m hearing from you.” She sounds genuine, genuine enough for Alex to feel something warm and fuzzy burst in her chest. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually take me up on my offer.” 

“I’m not,” Alex corrects her quickly. “Not yet, at least. I’d want to talk about it first. In person, I mean.” 

Lena hums in agreement. “Of course. Can you make it to my office around five?” 

Naturally, she gets there thirty minutes early. 

L-Corp looms high above as she parks her bike and leans back, waiting— observing. Only a few people wander in and out of the building, all looking more professional and put-together than Alex has in her entire life, even as a Staff Sergeant. She can see through the double glass doors inside, to a large waiting area and a reception desk, a fountain in the middle of the floor. 

She startles when her phone chimes out with a new text. _I can see you standing out there, Alex. Come inside, my assistant already knows you’re here._

Alex blinks, eyes drifting up to see Lena peering out a giant window on the third floor. If she squints, she’s sure she’ll be able to see Lena roll her eyes. She hurries in, through the glass doors and past the receptionist, who only looks up to give her a curious, albeit suspicious, side-eye as she waits by the elevators. 

“You’re early,” Lena says when she walks into the office, the door slamming shut behind her with an echoing bang. The loud noise makes her flinch out of instinct, but if Lena notices, she doesn’t say anything about it. “Not that I mind. I was just finishing up some spreadsheets.” 

She looks _excited_ about it, Alex realizes, as she takes in the sparkle in Lena’s eye. Of course she would be the type to _like_ doing spreadsheets. 

“Have a seat.” She motions towards a plush, comfortable looking white couch by the back wall, and Alex sits, tense and straight. Lena rolls her eyes. “Well, don’t get _too_ comfortable,” she scoffs, and Alex clears her throat, trying to relax some more. She crosses her legs, shoulders slumping, but there’s still a hint of alertness in her posture that Lena seems to take note of. 

“You want to talk about my offer?” 

Alex shifts in her seat slightly. “I’ve just— I’ve never had someone offer to… sleep with me, to help my…”

She trails off. It’s still hard to talk about, and to even think about, since her discharge and following diagnosis with post-traumatic stress. She’s never been used to being so powerless, so _vulnerable._

“Again, we don’t have to do it,” Lena assures her gently. “It was only a suggestion. I tried it with my best friend, Sam. She had a traumatic incident last year that left her with night terrors and flashbacks. It helped ground her, helped her to feel okay with being close to someone again.” 

Alex nods slowly, taking it all in. Lena kneels before her, a hand on her knee. “We don’t know each other very well, and I understand that it may be… disconcerting. Just think of it as a different type of therapy.”

“And you’re just— fine with this?” Alex manages to stammer out. 

“I want to help you,” Lena answers simply, and Alex’s mind seems to burrow deeper into a hole of total confusion. 

“But _why?”_ she finds herself asking, and Lena rises up from her spot kneeled on the floor, before dropping down to sit next to her on the couch. 

Lena shrugs, and there’s a small, sad smile that graces her lips for a moment. “Truthfully? Because you remind me of her. Samantha, I mean. And I—“ She pauses, breathes in deeply through her nose, and squeezes Alex’s knee. “I happen to understand myself how difficult it is, feeling like you have to fight for your life from the moment you wake up.” 

Alex purses her lips. Thinks about it for a moment. Her foot taps against the floor, leg twitching under Lena’s soft grip. 

“You can say no,” Lena reminds her softly, and Alex nods without looking at her. 

“Okay,” she breathes out, the tension slowly seeping out of the muscles in her shoulders. “Okay, we can try it. On one condition.” 

Lena shrugs. “Of course.” 

“We only do it at my apartment. Not a hotel, not penthouse number four, always my place.” If anyone were to be listening in, they might get the wrong idea out of context — it seems silly, for Alex to insist upon this just for something as mundane and ‘vanilla’ as sleeping together, _cuddling,_ but she can’t help it as a naturally suspicious and cautious person. 

She emphasizes this point by practically staring Lena down until the other woman smiles, clasping her hands together. “As long as you’re comfortable,” she agrees easily, and Alex sighs in relief as she stands up, nodding to herself. 

“Right. Okay. This was— thanks.” 

_Thanks?_ She nearly visibly cringes at herself, but manages to school her expression as Lena smiles up at her. 

“It was my pleasure, Alex.” 

It’s only once she’s halfway out the door that Lena calls her name again, a smug albeit fairly amused expression on her face. “And for the record, I happen to only have _three_ penthouses.” 

And then she’s plopping back down at her desk and calling on Jess to escort Alex back downstairs, and Alex is left to wonder what the _fuck_ she just got herself into. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: graphic depictions of violence at the end of the chapter. post-explosion gore, blood, etc. be wary if that stuff triggers you.

and even when we fall asleep, 

we can feel these nightmares infecting our dreams.

but when life comes into the darkness, the darkness can't understand what it sees.

and i would like to think that the more i grow with you, the more the darkness can't understand me.

i'd like to think that as i grow, the darkness can't even see me.

— _hollow light_ / _hollow lover,_ hotel books.

* * *

National City is finally starting to thaw out after a hellish, frigid winter. What remains of the snow is melting and mixing in with the dirt and debris that comes with living in a city. As it retreats, it leaves slushy, greyish piles of sludge that Alex has to carefully dodge as she makes her way across the street to CatCo from the chinese restaurant a few blocks away.

She barely makes it three steps through the door before her sister is crashing into her with a bone-crushing hug, a blur of blonde hair, and Alex has to set the bag of food she’d been carrying down to avoid dropping it.

“Whoa, okay,” she laughs, pulling back from Kara’s strong embrace. “We _just_ saw each other last night, Kar.” 

Kara shrugs. “I know, but— Are those _potstickers?”_

And just as quickly as she appeared, she’s gone in a rush of wind, the bag at Alex’s feet clutched in her hands. She’s back at her desk before Alex even has time to blink, digging into the potstickers like she’s been starving for years.

“Okay, hey! They’re for the both of us,” she chides, heart melting slightly at the stricken look on Kara’s face when she plucks a potsticker right from between her chopsticks. She’s shoving them in by the mouthful, and Alex raises an eyebrow at the gross, yet expected, sight. “Are you even chewing them?” 

Kara’s eyebrows furrow, the infamous crease forming as she huffs indignantly. “Shut up,” she murmurs, the words muffled by the food in her mouth. She swallows, then leans forward on her elbows, looking at Alex expectantly. “So, tell me how it went!” 

_It,_ referring to the job interview she’d gone to earlier that day. She’d started looking for a job three months into living in the city again, per her mother’s request, more than anything. It’s not like she _needs_ one, really; she’s doing fine with CRSC and monthly disability checks, but Eliza seemed to think it’s a good idea, and Alex figures it’s something to _do,_ after all. 

She’s lucky, too, because J’onn had managed to snag her an interview for a security position at the VA hospital downtown that his brother lives in. It’s less intense, just simple patrol, but it’s something she has experience in, unlike sitting still for hours at an office job somewhere. 

“I think I got the job,” she shrugs, trying to act nonchalant about it, but there’s excitement thrumming deep beneath her skin at the prospect of doing something that’s even just a little bit familiar to her. “I’ll have to go through mandatory testing, and a psychological screening, but— I think they liked me.” 

Kara’s lips purse, and Alex’s mood immediately sours. “Kara. Don’t.” 

“I just don’t—” And Alex sighs heavily, but she plows right through, “I worry about you, you know, doing… that stuff again.” 

“Trust me, I think this is a much safer job than being on the frontlines.” 

“It’s still dangerous though,” Kara shrugs, picking at her posticker and scrunching her face up. “I almost lost you once. I hate thinking I could lose you again.” 

It’s not like Alex can’t sympathize with that. Kara _had_ almost lost her; it’d taken her weeks to wake up in the hospital after multiple life-threatening surgeries, and even afterwards, there’d been a hard few months of recovery where she hadn’t felt like herself, depressed and anxious and overall, _hopeless._ She hadn’t been the same, a shell of herself, and she knows Kara’s constantly afraid she’ll revert back to _that_ Alex at any moment.

Which, as much as Alex hates to admit, is a very real possibility.

It’s the way ghost stories always go; transparent women floating through corridors with lost loves and tragic histories and missing heads or missing hearts. Alex has floated from one thing to another and pretended to be whatever she needed to be, and she’s _tired._ The world isn’t supposed to feel this heavy, and pain isn’t supposed to cling to her skin this way and suffocate her. 

Even now, she isn’t quite the same. The only thing that holds her up anymore are her own bones, and she already knows the fragility of those, the easy ways they fracture.

It’s a question of remembrance — there’s only so many times she can put up this fake facade of Alex Danvers that seems to be real to everyone before the fabric wears thin and everything starts to fall apart. She’s too old for this. Pulling apart the very thing you’re building _as_ you’re building it can only get you so far. 

“I’ll be fine,” she assures her sister anyways, reaching across the desk to grab Kara’s hand while the other one idly toys around with her chopsticks. 

She sees Kara’s frown deepen just a bit when the cold metal of Alex’s prosthetic touches her palm, a constant reminder of what she went through, but then she looks up at Alex and smiles softly.

“I know,” she nods, seeming to repeat this to herself in her head, too. 

Alex sits back. "Now, enough about me. How's _William?_ " she hurries to change the subject from something less heavy, popping a potsticker into her mouth.

Kara rolls her eyes at her tone of voice. "Don't say his name like that," she defends, giving Alex a stern look, "And he's good! I still want you to meet him soon."

Alex raises an eyebrow. "Let's just wait a week and see where it's going—"

"Alex, he's a nice guy. Stop it."

“I’m sure he is,” Alex shrugs. “For now,” she mutters lower, under her breath. Still, Kara manages to hear her anyways, reaching across the desk to slap her arm gently, warningly. 

“You do this with every guy I start dating,” she whines, to Alex’s amusement.

“Can you blame me? I mean, I think I’m being reasonable. Look what happened with Adam. James. Mon-El,” she ticks them off one by one with her fingers, pointedly ignoring Kara’s pitiful pout as she does. “God. Don’t even get me _started_ on Mon-El.”

Kara just rolls her eyes again. “Okay, _maybe_ you have a point. But this time is different.” 

“That’s what you said last time.” 

“While we’re on the topic of dating,” Kara cuts in, purposefully switching the spotlight onto Alex, who suddenly finds herself sinking down in her seat, “It’s been months since Maggie. You should try getting back out there, Alex. I’m sure there are lots of women who’d love to taste your—” 

Alex inhales sharply and nearly gags, choking on her food. “Jesus, Kara! No!” 

But Kara merely blinks in confusion. “What? I was just going to say they’d love your blueberry pancakes. Why are you so— oh. _Oh,_ okay, ew! _Not_ what I meant!” 

Alex just sinks further into her seat. Is this what her life has come to? 

_“Anyways,”_ Kara continues, over-emphasizing the word to make sure they’re fully moving on from the horrid miscommunication that just took place, “I mean it. Get back out there, find a woman who will appreciate you like you deserve.” 

Immediately, her mind flashes with dark brown hair and piercing green eyes, but Alex stamps down _that_ specific image as soon as it appears.

She refuses to go through it all again. 

“I just— I’ve never liked dating, you know that. It’s too complicated. I mean, the ‘talking stage’? What even is that?”

“It’s not that bad. It can be kinda fun!” Kara argues, ever so cheerful and optimistic. If there was one thing Alex missed during her time on base, it was Kara’s general _goodness._ Her never-ending optimism about life, even if it crosses into naivety at times. 

“I’m just not ready for a relationship right now, Kara,” she admits quietly, shrugging a shoulder. “Not even just because of Maggie, but— I’m just not ready.” 

Kara nods, understanding. Thankfully, she doesn’t push it. Instead, she points to Alex’s last posticker with her chopsticks, glancing up hopefully. “Are you going to eat that?” 

* * *

Her first week working security for the VA hospital is, as expected, fairly slow. There’s not much chaos, excluding the few times she’s heard an alarm blare through the speakers and witnessed a couple nurses rushing to a specific room, but other than that, the hospital wing she’s posted at is relaxed, quiet. 

She likes it more than she thought she would. She’s still keeping people safe, while not having to deal with so much at one time, which for once, she’s grateful for. It gives her a chance to relax, something she never had the time for in active duty.

It doesn’t hurt that the full-time residents seem to immediately take a liking to her. Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve all been in the same boat, or it could even be sympathy from some, but she finds herself chatting with a few residents regularly while on duty. 

“I’m so glad you’re making friends, Alexandra!” Eliza exclaims when Alex tells her about it one night over the phone. 

Alex rolls her eyes. Leave it to her mother to make her feel like she’s in high school, making friends with the lunch lady. “They’re not _friends,_ Mom. Most of them are Nana's age.” 

Still, she enjoys it. It gives her something to do during the day, and she feels like she has a _place_ there, comfortable in her position and what it requires of her. For the longest time since she’d gotten home, she’d felt like something was missing each time she reached for her service weapon and couldn’t find it. It’s a simple comfort thing, she guesses — she feels safer now, more like herself. 

“Have you met anyone else?” Eliza asks, not surprising Alex at all. Like Kara, her mom has a bad habit of poking and prodding and trying to insert herself in Alex’s personal business, where, contrary to popular belief, she _does_ _not_ belong. “Anyone… special?” 

And there it is. 

She feels a rush of deja-vu; hadn’t she _just_ had this conversation? “No, Mom, I haven’t met anyone.”

Eliza hums. “Nobody at all?” 

“No.” 

“Not even _one_ nice young lady?“ 

_“Mom.”_ She groans, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You’re just like Kara.”

“I’m just curious, Alexandra,” Eliza huffs, and Alex refrains from rolling her eyes; even over the phone, her mother would _know._ “And so is your sister, since you don’t tell us anything—”

“Mom,” she says, tone warning. 

“Alright, alright,” her mother concedes, albeit begrudgingly. “How are you holding up, sweetie?” 

Alex bites her lower lip. “I’ve been… good. I’ve been going to J’onn’s group meetings a lot lately.” She specifically avoids talking about anything too heavy with her mom, remaining vague but still providing enough information to keep Eliza from packing up and flying to National City for an impromptu ‘visit.’ 

“Oh?” she responds, sounding relieved. “I’m so glad, honey. You know therapy is never something to be ashamed of.” 

“Right.”

“And you also know your… _diagnosis,_ is also nothing to be ashamed of.” 

Alex inhales sharply, rubbing hard at her eyes. Even when her dad was still alive, Eliza was never able to call it by its name. Not like Alex blames her or anything, but the way she strictly replaces it with such technical terms like _diagnosis_ in _that_ tone of voice always leaves her feeling a little defensive. It’s her mother’s own way of remaining detached, she supposes. 

“Yeah, Mom, I know.” 

“And, Alexandra, please don’t—”

Thankfully, a sudden knock on the door serves as the perfect excuse to end the phone call, and she quickly cuts her mother off from whatever she was going to say next. “Okay, Mom, someone’s here, I gotta go. Love you!” 

She hangs up before Eliza can even respond, breathing a heavy sigh of relief as soon as the call ends. She needs to stop calling her mom when she’s sober.

It takes her a second to get up. She’d been on the couch, laptop resting hot against her thighs, tangled in blankets. By the time she reaches the door and looks through the peephole, she comes face to face with a fist half-raised to knock again. 

A fist with perfectly manicured nails and a variety of expensive looking rings.

She wrenches the door open. 

“Lena?” The woman in front of her is clad in a tight black dress and heels, shivering in the cold ambiance of a late February evening. “What are you doing here? We didn’t— it’s not Saturday.” 

Because Saturday night is when they’d initially planned for Lena to sleep over for the first time, and today is only Thursday. 

“I’m sorry,” Lena says, looking like she’s starting to regret coming here. “I can go if—”

But Alex shakes her head furiously, stepping aside to let her in. “No!” Then she clears her throat, lowering her voice. “I mean, you’re fine. I’m just surprised you’re here… Uh, why _are_ you here?” 

She watches as Lena takes in the inside of Alex’s apartment. She runs her hand over the fabric of the couch, eyebrows raised slightly at the decor; Alex has never been too big on sentiment, so her apartment is mostly bare save for a few framed photographs of her and Kara, as well as a few atom sculptures and fake succulents.

“I just buried my brother.” Lena’s eyes skim the various science books and magazines stacked upon each other. “Bioengineering?” she inquires, ever-so-casually.

Alex blinks, decides not to comment on the brother thing yet. “Yeah,” she responds slowly. “I won a few science fairs back in high school, and if I didn’t make it in the military, I always wanted to do something with bioengineering or medical tech.” 

Lena arches a brow. “Impressive,” she hums, but Alex isn’t letting her change the subject so easily. 

“Lena.”

Lena turns on her heel, eyes stuck on the fireplace and “There was a legal battle with the state over his body, that’s why it took so long,” Lena brushes off her unasked questions with a flippant wave of her hand, not looking at her. “And, well. Let’s just say I’ve never been too equipped with dealing with my mother.” 

_Tell me about it,_ Alex thinks, then crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “Why’d you come here, Lena?” 

“I just told you. Don’t tell me you have a shit memory as well,” Lena teases, but Alex just stares at her blank-faced, so she sighs in defeat. 

“You know what I mean. Why _here?”_

“You know it’s actually proven that physical touch is beneficial to our health?” she says instead of giving Alex a direct answer. “I read an article in grad school about it. It can even help with anxiety and depression, lowering your blood pressure. That’s part of the reason I suggested we do this.”

Alex leans against the arm of her couch, understanding immediately. “Oh. So you want to—” 

“Is that alright?” 

“I mean, um, how exactly did you want to do this?” Alex asks, fidgeting and shifting her weight from one leg to the other as she clears her throat. She suddenly feels more awkward than she’d like; she’d hoped she would at least have two more days to mentally prepare herself.

Lena glances at her from the corner of her eye. “I’d like to make sure you’re comfortable, of course. If you’d like, we can start by cuddling on the couch for a bit, then move to the bed?” 

Alex blushes at her words, but, “That sounds good,” she agrees, breathing in deeply. “Let me just get changed first.” 

Lena coughs, embarrassed. “Alex?” she calls out, just before Alex disappears into the bathroom. “I didn’t bring any pajamas.” 

Alex blinks at her. “You didn’t bring pajamas? Lena, you came here to sleep.” 

Lena rolls her eyes, tries to brush it off. “Yes, obviously, I _know_ that.” 

Despite her obvious embarrassment, Alex doesn’t tease her for it, rifling through her dresser drawers. Finally, she comes up with a pair of wool sweatpants and a plain T-shirt, tossing them at Lena without any warning. 

“Shut up,” Lena snaps as Alex grins at her. 

“I didn’t say any—“ 

“Shut _up.”_

By the time she’s gotten changed herself, pulling on a pair of flannel pajama pants and an old Stanford sweatshirt she’d gotten in high school, her laugh has died out, and the awkwardness has returned full force as soon as she steps back out into the living room.

“Should we,” she shifts her weight from one leg to the other, wringing her hands, “I mean, should we hug or something first?”

_Hug? Really, Danvers?_

“Is that what you’d like?” Lena asks, prompting Alex to huff and throw her arms up, awkwardness giving way to exasperation. 

“Lena, this isn’t just about _me,_ ” she argues, except, well, wasn’t it going to be? Lena had offered to do this for _her_ to practice being around another person, to arrange this thing between them in order to help Alex out. Alex hadn’t really considered the possibility that Lena needed this just as much as she did.

Lena is quiet for a minute, contemplative, before nodding. “Alright.” 

The couch cushion sinks down as Alex takes a seat next to her. She’s hesitant, but Lena gives her an encouraging look and she leans forward, wrapping her arms around Lena’s shoulders. Lena’s own arms curl around Alex’s middle, hands pressing against her lower back, warmth trapped between them.

It’s… surprisingly _not_ as awkward as Alex had expected.

“Oh. This is nice.” 

Lena’s shoulders shake as she laughs lightly. “I’d hope so,” she responds, before pulling away. Alex immediately aches for the warmth again, but just as Lena’s gone, she’s back again, pulling them both down into a lying position on the couch, with Alex’s head resting on her stomach. 

After a few minutes, Lena speaks up again. “Can I play with your hair?” 

It’s a weird thing to ask, but Lena does it anyways, and Alex glances up at her. She’s _blushing,_ so Alex takes pity on her and bites her tongue to keep from teasing her like she’d been ready to. 

“Yeah,” she breathes out in a rush.

She’d cut it recently since getting home, shaved the edges and styled it so most of what was left falls messily to the side unless she slicked it back into a pompadour. Lena runs her fingers through the strands, careful not to tear through any knots, nails scratching against the shaved spots on Alex’s head. It’s nice, overwhelmingly so, _dangerously_ so, and Alex lets her eyes slip shut at the feeling. 

“My mother used to do this to me as a child,” Lena speaks quietly, seeming to realize that Alex is in a… _state,_ and Alex simply hums in acknowledgement. “My _real_ mother, not my adoptive mother, Lillian. It’s how she used to get me to fall asleep.” 

Alex doesn’t open her eyes, but she makes little notes in her head about the things Lena tells her, adding in _‘adopted, like Kara’_ to a short bulleted list of things she’s learned about the other woman. 

“Well, it’s working,” she murmurs, mouth pressed into the shirt — _her_ shirt — Lena has on. 

“Should we move to the bed?” Lena suggests after a moment, her hand retreating, causing Alex to huff indignantly on accident. Then she blushes slightly, warmth rushing to her cheeks at the question, before she shakes her head. Lena didn’t mean it like _that._ Obviously. _Get it together, Danvers._

She doesn’t answer, just forces herself to sit up and rise to her feet, Lena following her lead as she makes her way to the bed and quickly ruins the perfectly-tucked-in sheets as she slides underneath them. 

“Quite a large bed for one person,” Lena muses as she lies down beside her, and Alex shrugs. 

“Used to be for two.” 

The reminder of why they’re even doing this weighs heavy in the air, but Lena doesn’t make a big deal of it. “Well, it’s a good thing, since there’s room for both of us now.” 

Alex barely even hears her, though, already half-asleep, pressed against Lena’s warm, soft body, and it’s the first night of many since she’s gotten back that she doesn’t wake up screaming.

* * *

They settle into a routine quicker than Alex had anticipated. 

They go to group, and then meet at Alex’s apartment around nine. Lena is always on time, right on the dot, and Alex has already come to recognize the way she knocks — three raps on the door, quick and sharp. 

Even J’onn seems to notice it; the way they’re becoming actual _friends,_ talking and joking around more, actually sitting next to each other in the circle. He mentions it one night as the others are folding up their chairs and filing out of the basement.

“You and Lena are getting close,” he observes, clearly trying to keep it vague enough that Alex doesn’t get defensive. “She’s helping you.”

He states this as a fact, and Alex looks up at him. Somehow he always seems to just _know_ things, and at times, she even finds herself wondering if he can read minds. “Yeah,” she shrugs. “I mean— just a little. At night. Sometimes.” 

“You should share with the rest of the group, Alex,” he suggests, and immediately, the thought makes her uncomfortable. “I’ve been very proud of you attending each week, but you’re not here just to listen. Talking about it could help you even more.”

J’onn is probably one of the only people in her life right now who doesn’t sugar-coat things, or tip-toe around the whole PTSD thing like most people do, including her own mother. So doesn’t she owe him this, at least? 

She chews on her bottom lip. It’s raw from the amount of times she’s done it lately, and hurts when her teeth slide against it, so she stops quickly before it bleeds. “Yeah. Maybe.“ 

It’s been a couple months now, since she started coming here, and she hasn’t spoken a word. And she knows J’onn doesn’t want to push her into doing anything she’s not ready for, like unloading all of her trauma onto a random group of people she only sees once every week, but he does remind her, gently, “You don’t have to talk about all of it. Not yet.”

“I know that,” Alex nods, then sighs. “I just don’t really know where to start.”

J’onn sets a big hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Start with whatever you’re comfortable with sharing. It’s a safe place here.”

She thinks about it long and hard for the next six days until the next meeting rolls around, and by then, she already has some vaguely-constructed idea of what she wants to talk about, what she’s ready to share. So when J’onn takes his seat at the front of the circle and asks, “Who would like to start us off?” she finds herself raising her hand almost immediately, wanting to get it over with.

But at the same time, she finds herself almost… _wanting_ to share. Or just wanting to recover, at least. And if sharing with the group is going to help her do that, then why shouldn’t she?

God, she can’t wait to tell Kara about this. 

J’onn smiles at her, and she tries to ignore the way Lena’s own eyes shoot over to her in surprise. Her tongue darts out to lick her lips as J’onn gestures for her to start. “Uh— hey. I’m Alex.” 

There’s a customary round of greetings from the circle before they all fall silent once more, all waiting patiently for her to go on. “I’m here because I was in the marines for twelve years before I was discharged, after I lost my arm during a mission in Sadr City. I guess I’m here for… PTSD. Anxiety. Grief, I don’t know.” 

She notices a few people glance at her prosthetic once she mentions it; it doesn’t bother her as much as it used to, the attention it draws, but it still makes her shift slightly under multiple pairs of eyes. “It gets hard sometimes,” she continues on anyways, clearing her throat. “It gets hard to remember who you are, while on duty. Where you end and your job begins.” 

J’onn nods in agreement and understanding at that, and she feels encouraged enough to keep going. “I’m still trying to remember who I am outside of the war. But I— I think it’s getting easier to figure out.” 

By the time she’s done speaking, a small ounce of the weight on her shoulders has lifted. She feels lighter, like she can do this if she tries hard enough, and J’onn must be thinking the same thing, because he envelopes her in a brief, but tight, hug before she leaves the church.

* * *

“I brought a pie,” Lena says one night, as soon as Alex opens the door for her.

Alex steps aside to let her in, and takes a look at the box in her hands. “Not that I don’t like pie,” she says as Lena sets it on the kitchen counter, “but… why?” 

“My friend Sam has a thing for panic-baking, and her daughter has just gotten kicked out of girl scouts, so she’s been baking more than they can eat. Therefore, she sends them to me.” 

Alex frowns, watching her cut slices into the pie and set them on plates. “How— how do you get kicked out of the girl scouts?” 

Lena smirks, but doesn’t look at her. “If you knew Sam’s child, you’d be surprised she didn’t get kicked out sooner.” 

Alex doesn’t even want to know why. “What kind is it?” she asks instead.

“Apple. You’ll love it. Sam uses her grandmother’s recipe.” 

Alex has only heard Lena talk about Sam a handful of times, but never anything of real substance — she gets quiet about it sometimes, sad, even, so Alex doesn’t press to find out more. Still, she wonders. 

Her curiosity only grows stronger once she takes her first bite. “Holy shit.” 

“I know, right?” Lena smiles, a genuine smile that makes the edges of her eyes crinkle, and Alex nearly moans around her fork. 

“You wouldn’t mind giving this Sam woman my number, would you?” she teases, and Lena reaches across the counter to smack her right in the arm, affronted. 

“Over my dead body, Alex Danvers.”

They don’t go to bed right away this time. Instead, they find themselves curled up on the couch with Alex’s laptop sitting on the coffee table, turning one of the Star Wars movies on and lying back against Lena, the other woman’s fingers gently running through her hair. It’s become a _thing_ with her, playing with Alex’s hair, and Alex can’t exactly say that she minds.

They don't make it to the bed to sleep, this time. Halfway through the movie, Alex feels her eyelids drooping, and she sinks further under the blanket, pressing into Lena’s warmth. 

This time, though, her sleep is not as peaceful as it has been the past few days. 

Almost as soon as she drifts off, she’s overwhelmed by the sun beating down on her, hot dust in her eyes and throat, the warmth of blood seeping down the side of her face. Just a second ago, she’d been sitting in the back of a humvee with her unit, joking around with Lucy and a few others before a flash of blinding white light and nothing but _heat_ followed.

And the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is Lucy.

Lucy, who doesn’t quite look like _Lucy_ anymore, eyes wide open but unblinking, parts of her scattered across the dirt road.

The second thing she sees when she opens her eyes is the bloody, mangled mess of flesh and bone hanging from her shoulder. She blinks, slowly and groggily, and then Vasquez’s face is hovering above her, painted crimson. “Shit, _shit,_ Danvers! We gotta get you to a medic.”

She tries to stand, just for her knees to give out under her. There’s a sharp, burning pain in her leg, and her delirious brain struggles to comprehend the gaping hole where her arm used to be. A pair of strong hands grab her from underneath her armpits, tugging her up and into the side of a warm body. 

Cutting through the delirium, Alex has half a mind to glance back at her friend’s body, eyes hot. “Wait— Lucy—” 

“I’m sorry,” Vas tells her, her own expression grief-stricken as she half-carries, half-drags Alex away. “I’m sorry, we have to go.” 

“But—”

She’s so _tired._ She barely registers the things Vas is yelling to her above the chaos, and all she wants to do is fall asleep, eyes falling shut. “Dammit, Danvers!” Vasquez’s hand strikes across her face, stinging, and her eyes are torn open. “Don’t you dare fall asleep on me. Stay the fuck awake.” 

“I just— ‘m tired,” she manages to mumble, her eyes starting to slip shut again, her mind foggy and lightheaded. 

But she doesn’t get to sleep before there’s another explosion somewhere behind them..The force of it is strong enough to knock them both down, Vasquez’s body shielding Alex’s from the fire that erupts over them, and then Vas is slumping over with a blood-curdling scream, enveloped in flames—

And Alex wakes up screaming. 

She wakes up screaming, the phantom pain in her arm worse than ever, and it takes her a few seconds to realize she’s staring up at her living room ceiling and not looking her dying friend in the eyes. 

It takes her even longer to realize that the warm body pressed against her is not Vasquez, but Lena. Lena, who’s wide awake now, eyes full of concern. “Alex?”

She’s panting, gasping for breath. And even though she’s not in the midst of a bombing, she still feels unbearably hot, throwing the blanket off herself. “Sorry. Sorry,” she murmurs, rubbing at her eyes as she sits up on the couch, ignoring the slight twinge in her neck from the position she’d been lying in. 

Lena follows her lead, one arm remaining wrapped around Alex’s shoulders. “You’re shaking,” she whispers, and Alex grits her teeth so hard her jaw aches. 

“Sorry,” she says again, but Lena shakes her head, shifting so she’s facing Alex completely.

“No. Don’t apologize,” she insists. Demands, more like, in a stern, serious tone. “That’s what we’re doing this for, isn’t it? Don’t be sorry.” 

Alex sighs again, resting her head between her knees, and Lena rubs at her back, fingers tracing the bumps of her spine as Alex tries to control her breathing. “I should be over this by now.” 

Lena tilts her chin up, forcing Alex to look at her. “Don’t ever say that. You went through trauma, Alex, you shouldn’t feel like you should be _over_ it,” she argues. When Alex remains silent, she gently adds, “We don’t have to talk about it, you know.” 

But Alex shakes her head. “No, no. I think— I need to.” 

Lena doesn’t say anything. Alex clenches and unclenches her jaw, trying to steel herself for what she’s about to talk about. It’s too _quiet_ in the room all of a sudden, and Alex can't focus with Lena’s attention directly on her, so she looks away and focuses on something else, like the fire crackling in the fireplace. 

“It was a roadside attack,” she starts. Her voice shaking, trembling with raw emotion. “I was riding in the back of a truck with my unit in Sadr City when it went off, and I— I spent months in a hospital in Landstuhl until I was recovered enough to be flown back here.” 

As she talks, she taps her fingers against her leg restlessly, and Lena can’t seem to help herself when she reaches down and takes Alex’s sweaty, clammy hand in her own to still her fidgeting. Somehow, it soothes her enough to keep going. “I lost half my unit in that attack. Good friends of mine died right in front of me, and my arm— I mean,” she chuckles bitterly, gesturing uselessly towards the metal replacement, “I just lost… so _much.”_

The last word comes out more like a sob, a broken, ragged sound that makes her cringe. Lena doesn’t say anything, simply watches her in silence, and Alex runs a hand through her hair, which is damp with sweat.

“And I never realized until I lost _her_ that—” She cuts off abruptly, but what she doesn’t say hangs in the air between then. _That I loved her more than I thought._

It comes out in a rush, this admittance, not at all like the dreaded pulling-of-teeth way it usually does, talking about everything. There is a confusing, debilitating kind of pain that hides deep in her ribs, just waiting to come out. Something more than grief, something more than heartbreak. 

“Who?” Lena questions, and Alex inhales deeply, a pang in her chest. “Maggie?” 

And it should be, right? Maggie was her first girlfriend, her fiance, the woman she was going to spend the rest of her life with before she was discharged. And yet, “No. Not Maggie.”

She thinks of dark hair and green eyes, infuriating smirks and sarcastic remarks, the affectionate and borderline flirtatious way Lucy would call her _Sergeant Danvers._ Then she remembers how _still_ Lucy had been after the first bomb went off, all mutilated flesh and bone, and Alex doesn’t think she’ll ever forget that image.

Everybody dies. Alex knew this. She had just seemed to have forgotten that Lucy qualified as _everybody._

Lena’s voice is a whisper in the dark. “Alex—“ 

“I’m going to change,” Alex cuts in, slipping off the couch and, consequently, out of Lena’s arms. Lena looks away as she tears off a dampened shirt and throws it in the hamper, before replacing it with a new one, a random grey V-neck. 

It’s only when Alex spares a quick glance towards the alarm clock on her nightstand that she realizes what time it is, and Lena seems to notice this at the same time she does, because she’s assuring her that it’s fine before she can even apologize for waking Lena up. 

“I don’t… I don’t think I can go back to sleep,” she admits quietly, even as she slips back under the blanket. “I’m too wound up.” 

“We don’t have to sleep.”

“No, I don’t want you to stay up for my sake,” Alex refuses, feeling guilty at the mere prospect of it. “Go back to bed, I’m just— I’ll just read a book or something.” 

Lena rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous, Alex,” she says, before rising from the couch herself and padding across the apartment. Alex watches as she messes around in the kitchen for a few minutes, eventually coming back with two steaming mugs of tea. “I put honey in yours.” 

Alex stares at the mug; she always puts honey in her tea. She hadn’t realized that Lena took note of such a thing. “Thank you.” 

There’s a change in the air after that, like tectonic plates shifting underneath them. Alex doesn’t know what it is, or what it means, but she leans back against Lena and tries not to think too much about it.


	3. Chapter 3

i know there was something before you. i just can't remember what it was.

— _i wrote this for you,_ pleasefindthis.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Alex starts to think of Lena as more of a best friend than anything else. It sneaks up on her, almost, the way she and Lena grow so close, get to know each other more. She’s had relationships like this in the past, like with Lucy and Vasquez, and even Vicky Donahue, back in high school, but those friendships were… simply not the same.

In what way, Alex has no idea. But this friendship she has with Lena is just _different._

 _Maybe it’s because you never cuddled up to or spooned with your other friends,_ a voice in her head taunts, but Alex isn’t going to think too deeply about that. 

They start hanging out more outside of group and the nights they spend the night together. They start doing friend things, like going out to drink and mini-golfing, despite Lena’s eye-rolls. They start binge-watching shows together — more specifically, HBO and Nat Geo, and Alex forces Lena to watch horror movies in return for Lena forcing her to watch romantic comedies. 

[And, _yes._ Lena is a big fan of romantic comedies, and naturally, Alex files _that_ piece of juicy information in her head for later use.]

Lena is already half-awake when Kara’s signature ringtone drags Alex herself out of a deep sleep, blinking groggily in the still-dim lighting of the early morning, and only gets one eye to focus long enough to realize how early it is.

“You talk in your sleep a lot. Do you know that?” Lena mumbles sleepily from her spot wrapped in Alex’s arms, huffing out a laugh as Alex looks at her incredulously. 

“Okay. I’m going to ignore that statement, because it’s definitely _not_ true, and I’m going to answer the phone instead.” 

Lena clicks her tongue. “Believe what you want. You’re a sleep-talker.” 

Alex rolls her eyes and, as promised, ignores her as she picks up the phone to finally stop the incessant ringing. “Kara. It’s seven o’clock, what do you want?” 

“William and I are going to brunch at Noonan’s today,” Kara says, and her tone of voice tips Alex off to the fact that she’s probably leading up to something. Something that Alex will definitely _not_ like. 

“Fun,” she clicks her tongue in response, glancing at Lena beside her, still laying in bed but half-awake by now, watching her quietly. 

“I would love it if you could come?” 

Alex squeezes her eyes shut. “I can’t. I have plans already.” She clears her throat, ignoring the funny look Lena shoots her from amidst the pile of pillows.

A beat of silence, 

“Alex, you never have plans. You don’t do anything but work and go to the gym,” Kara retorts. “Please, can you come to brunch? I really want you to meet him.” 

_Dammit._ She’s using her pitiful tone of voice that always seems to tug on Alex’s heartstrings no matter what the reason is. “I just—”

“Mom said you have to come,” Kara cuts in, and, _fuck._ If Eliza insists, there’s no way out; and the only thing worse than meeting William by herself is meeting William with her _mother._ “So you have no choice.” 

It doesn’t take long for Alex to roll out of bed and get dressed after Kara hangs up. She needs to go on a run or something. There’s no way she’s going to be able to sit in her apartment just _waiting_ for brunch to arrive.

“Want to go on a run?” 

Lena looks almost affronted at the suggestion. “It’s seven in the morning.” 

Alex frowns. “So?” 

The other woman just rolls her eyes, burying her face back into the pillows and burrowing under the blankets. “Try not to wake me up when you come back.” 

Despite her threat, though, Lena is already up by the time Alex gets back to the apartment, sweaty and still slightly hyped up on adrenaline. She’s lounging on the couch with the TV on low volume, still clad in one of Alex’s T-shirts that she’d worn the first time she’d slept over. 

_“I like it,”_ she’d insisted when Alex had raised an eyebrow in question at her one night, after she’d slipped it on despite having her own pajamas to wear now. _“Take it from me, I fucking dare you.”_

The T-shirt in question is one Kara had gotten for Hanukkah one year while she was back in Midvale on leave for the holidays. Kara had insisted this be the first present she opened, ready to burst with excitement as Alex held up the ‘Be-Er, an Essential Element’ shirt.

She’s not surprised Lena has taken a special liking to it.

“You look like shit.” This is the first thing Lena says to her once she gets back, taking in her sweat-soaked clothes and mussy hair. The second thing is, “A woman came by looking for you while you were gone. I don’t think she was happy with me answering the door.”

Alex immediately grows alert at that. “What? Who was it?” 

Lena rolls her eyes. “Ah, right, because I know everyone you’re associated with.” 

Alex ignores that bit of sarcasm, choosing instead to start a pot of coffee to distract herself from irrational, paranoid thoughts. It couldn’t have been _her,_ could it? It’s been months now, and the rings are still in Alex’s nightstand drawer, cold and untouched since. “Seriously, Lena, did she give you a name? What’d she look like?”

She must not hide her thoughts well enough, because Lena’s eyebrows lift slightly, knowingly. “It wasn’t Maggie, if that’s what you’re worried about. Actually, she said her name was Eliza—”

“My _mother_ was here?” Fuck, she would’ve preferred the awkwardness and discomfort of seeing Maggie again over Eliza’s constant nitpicking and passive-aggressive nagging. 

“That was your mother?” Lena suddenly looks a lot less amused now, sitting up straighter, eyebrows furrowed. “Wonderful.” 

Alex just buries her face in her hands and groans. Of course her mom would choose to visit her at a monumentally wrong time. More specifically, though, she wonders _why_ her mother is here.

“I haven’t even told her about this… agreement thing,” she gestures vaguely between them and groans. “God, she probably thinks you’re a one-night-stand or something.” 

Lena purses her lips at that. “Bold of you to assume it’d only be once.” 

Alex can only glare at her, a look that Lena blatantly ignores as she rises from the couch to change into her own clothes. Alex stays where she is, leaning against the kitchen counter.

It’s not that she hates her mother. Far from it. It’s just that sometimes, the only way she can survive spending the day with her is through several glasses of wine, or even a couple shots of vodka, if the reason for being together is rough enough. It was like that at her father’s funeral; even at fifteen years old, Alex had only been able to push through it after a couple cans of beer that she stole from her parent’s liquor cabinet. 

And the thought of dealing with her mother alongside Kara’s sometimes borderline-exhausting cheerfulness _and_ meeting a complete stranger who, frankly, sounds just like the rest of Kara’s douchebag exes— well, Alex is already feeling the effects taking hold. 

“Coffee’s burning.” 

Lena tells her this as she struts past, now dressed in her own clothes, half-pulling on her heels, half-brushing her hair. It startles Alex out of her thoughts enough to process her words, and the bitter, burnt scent coming from the coffee pot. “Shit.” 

“Still thinking of your mother?” Lena asks, calling out from the bathroom as Alex rushes to turn the coffee machine off.

She sighs, rubs her face. She’s too tired for this. “My sister insisted I meet with her new boyfriend for brunch today, and I guess my mother will be there too,” she explains, chuckling slightly at the sympathetic look on Lena’s face. “Yeah, exactly. I’m not looking forward to it.” 

Lena shrugs, taking a mug and pouring some of the coffee into it. “You never know. Maybe her boyfriend is a nice guy.” 

“Kara thinks so,” Alex huffs, “but she doesn’t exactly have the best track record.”

“Well, I’m sure it won’t be that bad.” Lena reassures her of this with a soft smile, and that’s when the lightbulb goes off above Alex’s head. 

“Come with me.” 

Lena nearly spits out her coffee, quickly dabbing at her chin. “Excuse me?” 

“Come with me! Please?” She doesn’t know why she grows so desperate now, but the thought of having someone else there — someone who can probably not only keep her in check, but keep her _sane_ — makes the entire idea of brunch seem a lot less dreadful. 

Lena doesn’t seem as excited at the prospect. “You’re serious?” 

“Come on, you already met my mom—”

“Yes, for three seconds as I explained to her that no, she did not have the wrong apartment, and that you were on a run. All the while wearing _your_ T-shirt, nonetheless.” And, this is another thing Alex adds to the ever-growing list of what she knows about Lena: that when she’s anxious, even if she doesn’t want to admit it, her voice gets higher and higher in octave the more she talks. 

“Alex, I really don’t think it’d be a good idea.” 

And yeah, okay, maybe not. God knows Eliza would have something to say about it, at least. But Alex sticks her lower lip out anyways, because as good as Kara’s pouty-face is, hers is just as heart-rendering. “Please?” 

“No.” 

Then come the eyes, wide and watery and pitiful. _“Please?”_

“No, Alex.” 

“Plea—” 

Lena throws her arms up before she can even finish, “Alright!” 

Because Noonan’s is only a few blocks down from her apartment complex, Alex suggests they walk there. It gives her a chance to enjoy the way Spring has sunken its claws into the tail of Winter, ripping it to shreds and replacing it with something pleasant. The sun beats down on them, not too hot, and it’s just the right amount of warm and breezy. Fresh grass sprouts between the cracks in the sidewalk, the leaves and flowers slowly but surely returning to the trees in various hues of pink and purple.

It’s nice, relaxing. Alex can almost _feel_ the serotonin being churned out inside her.

“I’m sweating.” 

Lena doesn’t find the walk to be as pleasant.

Alex squints. “Barely.” 

“ _Enough_ ,” she argues, rolling up the sleeves of her button-up. Alex rolls her eyes and scoffs.

”Okay, well, I’m sorry for forcing you to endure this _horrible_ torture—“ 

_“Alex!”_

And there’s Kara, slamming into her and nearly knocking the wind out of her lungs, just as she does every time they see each other. She hugs back just as tight, if not harder, right before Kara seems to catch sight of Lena hovering awkwardly behind them and pulls away. 

“You must be Lena!” she squeals, practically jumping up and down as she pulls Lena in for a hug. The other woman tenses up immediately, arms dangling at her sides, but Kara doesn’t seem to notice or care that she isn’t hugging back. “Alex told me you were joining us.” 

Lena blinks, most likely surprised at her sister’s lack of control when it comes to affection. “Um— yes.” 

“Of course she did. It’s Alexandra’s specialty, changing plans without the rest of us. Hello, Lena, darling.” 

Alex grits her teeth at the voice behind them. She’d hoped her mother would stay inside and wait for them. Lena just smiles awkwardly in return, and it’s the first time Alex has seen her as anything other than cocky and put-together. “Hello again, Miss Danvers.” 

“Oh, it’s Eliza!” her mom insists, and that’s when she finally seems to remember Alex is there, because she clears her throat expectantly. Alex can only sigh.

“Hi, Mom.” 

As soon as she turns around, Eliza somehow manages to smile and cringe at the same time, something Alex is fairly certain only her mother can do. “Oh, you look pale, sweetie. Are you eating enough?” she frets, the question laced heavily with her usual passive-aggressive criticism. 

Alex rolls her eyes. _Already?_ “I’m eating just fine—“ 

“Hey!” Kara cuts in, already slicing through the tension. _Thank God._ “Speaking of eating, William got us a table.” 

Alex has only ever been to Noonan’s a few times, but it’s Kara’s favorite place to eat. Mostly because of the sticky buns they serve for breakfast, undoubtedly, because that’s the first and only thing Kara orders as soon as they sit down at the table in front of a tan, dark-haired man Alex has never seen before.

“Be nice,” Lena whispers in her ear, breath tickling the back of her neck. Alex shivers, and then tries to conceal that reaction by scooting further down in the booth to let Lena in. 

“I’m always nice,” she whispers back, and pretends not to see the way Lena, brows raised, takes a long sip of her drink instead of answering.

“Alexandra,” William speaks up, very, very british. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.” 

Alex forces a smile. “It’s Alex,” she corrects him, instead of returning the compliment. Reaching an arm over the table to shake his hand, he takes it carefully, as if he could potentially rip the entire prosthetic off accidentally. 

“Kara told me you were in the marines,” and he looks at her with so much sympathy she wants to throw up. “Thank you for your service.” 

“It’s my privilege.” It’s the general, rehearsed response she gives to most people who thank her, which mostly consist of elderly people at the grocery store. 

“You know, my grandparents were actually born in the U.S. My great grandfather served in World War I as a fighter pilot. It was his legacy, so to speak. He was a real hero, like most who’ve served, of course.” 

He directs this last sentence towards Alex as though she’d be offended if he didn’t. Alex forces herself to remain stoic at his words; throughout her twelve years of serving, she never once felt like a ‘hero,’ and hearing people call her such leaves a bad feeling in her stomach. As much as citizens and government officials like to praise her for it, she’s probably killed more innocent people than enemies in the past decade. 

“It’s really nothing to gush over.” 

The words come out in a rush, unstoppable, before she can even catch herself. Eliza’s head snaps up, and William stops in the middle of his sentence, surprised. “Alexandra,” her mother exclaims, dropping her fork. 

“It’s not,” she insists harshly. 

“Alex,” Eliza warns, low and quiet. “Now is not the time.” 

Alex swallows thickly, immediately regretting her words, because Eliza is right. No matter how much ill will she has, brunch is not the time to bring up those issues. Desperate to steer the conversation in another direction, she clears her throat and asks, “So you work with Kara?”

For a second, William seems shocked, fumbling for a response until he finally manages to find the words. “Well, I’d say she really works _under_ me,” he teases somewhat awkwardly, wrapping an arm around Kara’s shoulders. “I’m kind of the number two in the office at the moment. Andrea has quite the soft spot for me.” 

Alex blinks, taking in the semi-tight smile that appears on Kara’s face at his joke. “Number two, huh?” 

She feels an elbow dig into her side and shoots a glare Lena’s way, who simply ignores her and smiles politely at the other side of the table. “I think that’s very interesting, William. What exactly do you report on?” 

She sinks back in her seat as Lena and William talk, zoning out a bit. It’s only when she hears her name being called that she comes back to her surroundings, looking up and around the table, all eyes on her. “What?” 

Kara rolls her eyes amusedly. “Eliza asked how work was, dummy.” 

This makes Alex’s mood lighten a bit, perking up in her seat. Beside her, Lena’s hand lands on her knee, and she smiles. “Uh, it’s good! It keeps me busy. And there’s rumors that they’re already thinking about promoting me to the senior security position.” 

“Alex!” Kara squeals excitedly. “That’s amazing!” 

“That’s great, honey,” Eliza hums, and Alex lightens up even more at the first compliment from her mother. Then, lowering her voice so William can’t hear, “And how is… you know? Are you still having nightmares?” 

Alex bites her lower lip, shifting awkwardly in her seat, eyes darting over to William, who’s clearly listening in but pretending to be preoccupied with his food. “Um, actually, Mom—” she starts, glancing over at Lena, “Lena has been helping me a lot with those.” 

Eliza’s eyebrow lifts up in curiosity. “Oh really?” 

She hesitates, not quite ready to explain their unusual agreement. How exactly _do_ you explain to your mother that you’d impulsively agreed to let a stranger sleep in your bed to alleviate your fear of intimacy, and, more specifically, of choking someone in your sleep again? 

Luckily, Lena chimes in with an explanation first, wearing a charming smile that makes even Alex’s stomach flutter. “Yes, I have,” she agrees with a nod. “We actually met at J’onn Jonzz’s group therapy, though Alex and I decided to experiment with a more one-on-one, direct type of therapy ourselves.” 

Alex has to hold back an amused laugh. _Direct_ is one way to describe what they’re doing. And to her relief, Eliza simply nods along with this, seeming to approve without questioning what exactly ‘direct’ means in this case. 

“And what do you do, Lena?” 

Lena seems ecstatic to talk about her own job. “I’m the CEO of L-Corp. You may remember it as Luthorcorp?” 

By now, Alex is already zoning out of the conversation again, deciding to just listen and observe as the rest of them talk. She does this until it’s almost time to go, with Kara checking her watch and hitting at William’s chest, reminding him that they have work soon. She hugs Kara tight before she goes, then Eliza, albeit a bit more tense, and awkwardly shakes hands with William. 

“It truly was a pleasure meeting the sister Kara is constantly gushing about,” he tells her, just before Kara grabs onto his elbow and leads him away. 

When it’s just her and Eliza standing there, Alex feels the tension return almost immediately. Though she’d acted unsurprised and accepting during brunch, she looks at Alex with a stern frown, lips tight. “I wish you would’ve told me about Lena before,” she says, looking over Alex’s shoulder at the other woman, who’s respectfully lingering just a few feet away. “I hate that you don’t tell me these things, Alex.” 

Alex scratches the back of her neck. “It wasn’t… it’s not that important,” she brushes it off, shrugging. 

“Dating someone new _is_ important, Alex!” Eliza argues, and— wait, what? “I just wish you felt like you could talk to me.”

“Whoa, Mom, we’re not— why do you think— wait a minute.” She stammers to explain herself, laughing nervously, suddenly all too aware of Lena’s presence behind them. “I mean, we’re friends. _Just_ friends.” 

Eliza frowns, looking unconvinced. “Oh. You two looked— I just assumed—“ 

“Nope, no, just friends,” Alex reiterates, face heating up dangerously, feeling more awkward by the second. “Um, isn’t your cab waiting?” 

Eliza seems to realize that she’s pushing her away, her expression growing tighter, but she doesn’t fight it. Instead, she hugs Alex again, briefly, awkwardly, before stepping back and climbing into the cab. When Alex joins Lena a few feet away, she has to try hard to stop blushing before the other woman notices. 

“Your family seems so… close,” Lena tells her once they branch off from the others, making their way back to the apartment complex. 

Alex pauses and throws a sideways glance at her. The misunderstanding with Eliza is still fresh in her mind, but she tries hard to ignore it. “You got _that_ from this brunch? Seriously?”

Lena looks at her, mouth open for a second before she closes it again, seemingly deciding not to say whatever was on her mind. Instead, she turns and continues walking. “I did, somewhat. You _do_ love each other, that’s quite apparent no matter how much you bicker with Kara or get irritated with your mother.”

Alex shrugs a shoulder, nonchalant. “I mean, yeah, we’re family.” 

Lena is oddly silent for a moment before she answers. “Well, it’s just that in my experience, being a family doesn’t always mean that you love each other,” she points out, shaking her head as Alex frowns at her words. “Sorry, that was…” 

“No, it’s fine,” Alex stops her from apologizing. She hadn’t even considered what Lena’s experiences were. Though her family isn’t exactly the Brady Bunch, she’s lucky to have them in her life. Lena can’t exactly say the same, can she? 

“Actually,” Lena grabs onto her forearm suddenly. “You don’t mind if I head straight to the office, do you? I just have some work to catch up on.” 

Alex tries to quell the rising disappointment in her chest. Admittedly, she’d been looking forward to spending the rest of the day with Lena, whatever that meant. “No! No, of course. Go!” she waves her off. 

Lena flashes her a small smile. “And Alex?” she adds, just before flagging down her driver “You do deserve to be thanked for your service. You _were_ a hero to some people, I’m sure. Don’t diminish that.” 

Alex purses her lips. How had Lena even known she was thinking about that? Have they gotten so close already that they can practically read each other's minds? Do they know each other that well by now? 

“Right,” she answers, watching Lena slide into the backseat of the car that pulls up. “Bye, Lena.”

* * *

After almost three months, Alex finally gives in and makes Lena a copy of her apartment key for when she works late, or even just needs somewhere to go that isn’t, well, her three fucking penthouses. It’s been long enough that they’ve built up trust in one another, so she figures she might as well, and it isn’t like Lena is going to break into her apartment and steal anything, after all.

“Except maybe the plant on your bookshelf,” Lena retorts when she voices this non-concern aloud, gesturing to the depressing plant in question, half-dead and wilting, the petals littering the dry soil beneath it. “You do know you have to water it, don’t you?”

Alex’s purses her lips, sheepish. “I completely forgot that existed until this moment.” 

And that’s… kind of the only thing Lena uses the key for, when it’s not to enter the apartment late at night. Sometimes, Alex will come home from the gym to see her rummaging through the fridge with a trash bin beside her, tossing out boxes of food and cartons of milk she’d bought. 

“Hey!” she rips a takeout container out of Lena’s hands. “This is my food!” 

Lena doesn’t even spare her a glance as she tosses another into the trash. “Alex, you’re living off of takeout and stale beer. This is unacceptable.” 

“You realize my giving you a key wasn’t… an invite to come in and throw all my food away, right?”

Lena rolls her eyes. If Alex is being honest, she’s surprised Lena’s eyes haven’t gotten stuck up there by now, so far back in her skull. “There’s absolutely no excuse for this,” she chides, completely disregarding Alex’s statement. “I’m taking you grocery shopping tomorrow.” 

Alex guffaws, arms crossed over her chest in defiance. “Lena, I’m an adult, I think I can do my own shopping.”

Lena doesn’t say anything in response. Instead, she simply holds up a styrofoam takeout container of… _something._ Alex can’t remember. When had she even ordered that? 

At her silence, Lena nods smugly. “Right. That’s what I thought.”

Later that same night, once she’s already half-asleep, she hears the key turn in the lock and the door creak open, and there’s shuffling in the kitchen. When she cracks an eye open, she can just barely see without her glasses the blurry figure of Lena unloading paper bags of groceries. She slams her eyes closed when the figure comes closer, and then the mattress is sinking down as Lena crawls into bed, presses up against her back and wraps an arm around her waist to pull her closer ever-so-gently. 

Alex pretends to already be asleep, forcing her breathing to even out. The next morning, her fridge is fully stocked, fresh fruits and vegetables and all. 

And life goes on like that; Alex can’t complain, especially when she finds herself having less and less night terrors, and the thought of being intimate with someone doesn’t scare her as much as it used to. This agreement with Lena is a _good_ thing, it’s _working_ , and she doesn’t plan on letting it go so soon. 

But after a while, she starts to fall into a routine. 

Wake up next to Lena. Go to work. Hit the gym. Fall asleep next to Lena. Repeat. 

And routines are nice; it’s what she’s used to. But for some reason, this routine bothers her. She’s not _doing_ enough. At least in the marines, there was always a reason. There was always a mission. These days, it’s like she’s in limbo, hovering between military life and civilian life, feeling like she has no place in either. 

The only real option she has is to _hover._ She’s restless, her body aching for something impulsive, something risky despite herself. She misses the addictive rush of adrenaline through her veins, the thrill of being in danger. 

She notices it like she’d notice a piece of chipped paint on the wall. It’s subtle at first, but sooner or later, the problem becomes bigger and harder to ignore. Or, at least, until shit hits the fan and consequently becomes _impossible_ to ignore. 

For Alex, shit hits the fan on a Tuesday. 

The thing is, she’s always run to alcohol, hasn’t she? Even as a teenager, she’d solve her problems by shot-gunning beers down at the beach in an ever-so-convenient ‘friendly competition’. She was _known_ for it around school, as the girl who’d get plastered at parties but wake up the next morning able to ace her tests. 

Things haven’t changed much since then, it seems, because here she is, distracting herself from the overwhelming, ever-growing restlessness in her life with a shot of whiskey. 

_Just like Dad, right?_ she thinks bitterly. _Like father, like daughter._

The bar she ends up at is different than the one she and Lena frequent. On the oceanfront, near the edge of the city, it’s filled with shady-looking customers and shitty music, but Alex stays anyway, the cracked leather barstool sinking in beneath her as she sits down.

[She’s going to regret this; there’s a major self-destructive streak in her. She knows this. She _knows._ ]

She orders a round of shots for herself anyways. 

* * *

The thing about war is that you never fully leave it. 

While civilian life is an easy thing to shed with years of training and experience, the war is something that will stick to her for the rest of her life. Alex learns this the hard way, and it’s not so much voluntarily seeking out trouble than it is just accidentally stumbling upon it, but the fact of the matter is that she welcomes it with open arms either way. 

And it’s when Alex embraces this that things start to go very, _very_ wrong. 

She’s only halfway through her first round when someone says her name, sharp and worried. It’s Lena, tugging on her wrist to get her up off the stool. “Come on, we’re going home.” 

“Lena?” she almost chokes on her drink. “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m here to take you home,” Lena tells her, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Now get up. She’s done!” She directs this last line to the bartender, who, much to Alex’s chagrin, nods accordingly and leaves to close her tab. 

“Wait—“ Her brain struggles to catch up, all fogged up, her thoughts processing slower than usual. “How’d you find me?”

Lena rolls her eyes. “You called me, dumbass,” she answers, holding up her phone. Sure enough, there’s a phone conversation shown between them, spanning almost ten minutes. “Or butt-dialed me, more accurately.” 

Alex blinks hard. “Oh.” 

“What are you doing, Alex?” More specifically, then, “Why are you here?” 

Alex swallows down another shot. Relishes in the burn of the alcohol sliding down her throat, ignores the dull ache that’s twining around her ribs. “Why do you think?” she snaps involuntarily, but Lena doesn’t snap back, instead staying silent as she goes to take another shot.

There’s a feeling of warmth as Lena steps closer to her, reaching around her to grab the shot glass out of her hand and set it back down, sliding it across the bar where she can’t reach it. Vaguely, Alex thinks, ‘ _hey, I paid for that,’_ but even more clearer, she thinks, ‘ _Lena smells good. Like cherries.’_

She wants to lean back, to breathe Lena in and melt into her. She doesn’t know where the thought comes from; is she that drunk now? That she’s thinking about how good her friend smells? 

“Where are your keys, Alex?” Lena asks, rifling through the empty pockets of the leather jacket draped over the back of the barstool.

“They took them,” she sulks, running a hand through her hair. It’s damp, sticking to the side of her face. 

Lena sighs, and then the warmth of her body is gone as she steps away. “Okay, I’m going to talk to the bartender and get them back. Stay here.”

“Nowhere to go,” Alex retorts, but Lena just ignores her, and Alex watches from the corner of her eye as she leaves to talk to the bartender. She puts her head down, a wave of dizziness overcoming her. Somewhere in the back of the bar, a couple shot glasses crash to the floor, and there’s a rally of shouts and curses from one of the tables that makes her flinch. Beside her, another man at the bar shifts closer, into her space, too close. _Too close._

Everything is spinning all of a sudden, and she’s shaking now. How many drinks has she had? 

“Alex?” There’s a set of perfectly manicured fingers snapping in front of her face. It’s Lena, back with her keys. Alex can barely register her words, a heavy fog settling in her brain, and she sways in her seat, slumping closer to the man beside her.

“Whoa, lady, you alright?” he asks, and then there’s a big, unfamiliar hand coming down on her left arm. It startles her enough that she nearly breaks the glass in her hand, and suddenly Alex can’t control the way her right arm reels back automatically, her elbow smashing into his face, metal against skin and bone. “Fuck!” 

_He’s trying to attack you,_ her mind screams, now fully alert. _He’s trying to hurt you. He’s trying to hurt Lena._

She reels her arm back again. And again. And again. She doesn’t stop until there’s someone holding her back and something hard and sharp connecting to her face, knocking her to her knees, before there’s nothing but darkness.

When she comes back to herself, they’re not longer in the bar, but outside, and Lena nearly trips over herself in her haste to get to the car waiting for them by the curb. She practically shoves Alex into the backseat before climbing in herself and slamming the door, and Alex barely registers her giving the driver an address before there are soft fingertips gliding across her face. 

There’s a deep, painful gash on her cheek, the side of her face caked with both fresh and semi-dried blood, and Lena scowls at this as she examines her. “I can’t _believe_ you did that—“ 

Alex frowns in confusion, but the action makes her face hurt even more. “What the _hell_ were you thinking?” Lena demands, voice trembling slightly. With worry or with rage, she can’t tell. 

What _was_ she thinking? Alex can’t remember. She can’t remember anything after the initial blow to the guy’s nose. After that, everything had gone black, until the moment she’d found herself being half-dragged, half-carried towards Lena’s car.

“I don’t know.” The answer comes out quiet, raspy. Lena doesn’t offer her a response, and Alex leans back against the leather seat, feeling sick. 

“We’re here, Ma’am.” 

The car grinds to a stop. Alex feels the motion in her feet. Lena’s hand wraps around her wrist and tugs, her arms immediately wrapping around Alex’s torso to keep her steady as they make their way up to a tall white building.

“Is this your—“ 

“Yes,” Lena cuts her off, sharp and strict. “This is my penthouse.” 

In Alex’s groggy, drunken state, she doesn’t have time to take in much as they walk through, but she realizes this is the first time she’d ever been in Lena’s place. 

“We need to clean you up,” Lena murmurs, almost to herself, as she leads Alex to a bathroom bigger than Alex’s entire living room. Her skin is cold against the marble counter as she leans against it, exposed where her shirt had somehow been torn in some places, and she winces as Lena grabs her chin without warning. 

“Stay still,” she orders, and Alex feels like she has no choice but to obey her. 

She closes her eyes, focusing on the clacking of Lena’s heels against the tile floor as she crosses the penthouse. She returns just a few minutes later, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, ointment, and some bandages in hand. 

“Do you do this a lot?” Alex asks, because Lena certainly doesn’t seem like a stranger to the process of cleaning deep wounds. 

“Lex used to get into a lot of fights when we were younger,” she explains quietly, motioning for Alex to angle her cheek towards her. “Lillian refused to clean him up, so it was always my job.” Lena only talks about her brother in bits in pieces. This is one of those rare times when she doesn’t seem to be forcing herself to repress all her memories of him. 

“This is going to hurt like a bitch,” she warns after a moment, just before pressing a cotton ball soaked in alcohol to her cut. Alex hisses, but grits her teeth through the burn, and Lena brings her other hand up to keep her from involuntarily jerking away.

For some reason, the first touch of Lena’s fingers on her face seem to send a jolt straight down her spine.

It's in a human's nature to get curious and to get all these strange fuzzy feelings, Alex knows that. The human body is full of hormones and endorphins and adrenaline and though it’s not weird or unusual, Alex can’t quite comprehend why the feeling of Lena’s hands on her makes her so dizzy. 

At first, it was nothing — sure, she and Lena sleep in the same bed sometimes, and Lena is undoubtedly an _attractive_ woman, there’s no denying that — so when her heart had first started to beat a little faster when Lena slipped into bed, their thighs brushing, Alex didn't think much of it. 

But now, as Lena’s fingertips press against the line of her jaw, green eyes filled to the brim with worry as she cleans the cut on Alex’s cheek, the feelings can’t be ignored. And this is more than just the alcohol in her system. 

They’re there as Lena holds her head in place, as one hand squeezes Alex’s knee in apology when Alex winces, the alcohol stinging her fresh wound. They’re there as Lena presses the bandage in place, as she unthinkingly tucks a strand of hair behind Alex’s ear, and as she shakes her head, exasperated, muttering something incoherent under her breath. 

“ _Idiot,_ ” Alex manages to make out — but despite the anger in Lena’s voice at getting herself hurt, for hurting that man, there’s also something else. Something she can’t place. 

“Sorry,” she sighs, words still slurred. How drunk had she gotten? She can’t quite remember anything past the… fifth shot? Or maybe it was her sixth? “I didn’t mean— ‘m sorry.” 

Lena just rolls her eyes. Alex tries to swallow down whatever feelings she’s suddenly being bombarded with. “You’re just lucky I was there. Now go get changed, I have to make some calls.” 

Alex rubs at her sore jaw. “Calls?” 

“Yes,” Lena huffs. “I was supposed to be on a conference call twenty minutes ago.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry.” 

“Stop saying that, sweetie,” Lena shakes her head. Still, Alex feels guilt arise in her chest, her cheek throbbing. The pet name seems to fall from Lena’s lips effortlessly, but still by accident, because her eyes widen just a fraction after she says it. It would’ve been barely noticeable, if Alex hadn’t already been looking at her. She doesn’t correct herself, though. Alex takes note of that. 

“I’ll be back,” she says instead, and then she’s closing the bathroom door behind her, leaving Alex alone and still leaning against the cold marble.

Lena is back quicker than she anticipated, looking slightly irritated. But as soon as she takes in Alex’s wounded state again, she’s back to being concerned and gentle, 

Alex just swallows hard, throat dry. She’s still trembling slightly. “I thought he was attacking me,” she admits slowly, quietly. Ashamed. 

Lena pauses. “What?” 

“I thought he was attacking me,” she repeats, louder this time. Clears her throat, shifts her weight to her other leg. Her prosthetic arm is suddenly painfully obvious to her now, but she’s almost grateful for the fact that she couldn’t feel the way his nose cracked under her metal elbow.

“I hurt him because I’m still— I’m still so _fucked up._ ” 

“Alex,” Lena’s hand comes up to her face again, thumb brushing softly against her uncut cheek. “Look at me. You can’t beat yourself up over tonight.” 

But Alex shakes her head, “No, no, I— I hurt him, I hurt him. Did I hurt _you?_ ” Her breaths are coming quicker now, she’s almost hiccuping, eyes hot. “Fuck, did I hurt you?”

“No, Alex, you didn’t hurt me. Hey, you didn’t hurt me. I’m alright, see?” She motions towards herself, and through blurry tears Alex can just barely see that she’s indeed unhurt, but it doesn’t make her feel better. “Alex, sweetie—“

It happens so fast she herself barely has time to process it. Alex doesn’t know what propels her to do it, but all of a sudden she’s lurching forward, pressing herself against Lena, pressing their lips together. It only takes Lena a split second to react, kissing her back for just a moment before she pulls back jerkily, emerald eyes widening in shock. 

_Shit. Shit, shit, shit. What a fucking idiot._

She jerks away, nearly slamming her head into the mirror above the sink. “I— fuck, I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know why I did that.” She _does_ know though, doesn’t she? “I have to go.” 

She pushes herself off the sink and grabs her jacket, her whole face burning as she rushes out of the bathroom, feeling green eyes burning into the back of her head the whole way. “Wait, Alex—“ 

The door slams shut behind her. She doesn’t let herself look back. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing this chapter: the readers can have some lena pov, as a treat,

cause i could never hold a perfect thing and not demolish it.

what am i thinking? what does this mean?

how could somebody ever love me?

— halsey, _forever… [is a long time]_

* * *

She kills Lex on a Tuesday. 

She kills Lex on a Tuesday, and it’s storming, because of _course_ it is— isn’t this how these things always go? Always during a storm. Always at night. 

The weight of the gun feels heavier in her hands than it does in its holster, and this is the first thing Lena notices when she pulls it out. 

She’s not new to this; she’s taken classes, and it’s not as though she hasn’t been living the past year and a half with the weapon strapped to her waist most of the time, hidden under coats and dresses and providing her with a sense of comfort that nothing else had. 

It’s heavy in her hands, and cold too. She’d thought things were getting better. The shaking had stopped along with the nagging feeling of being watched, and the hair at the back of her neck stopped sticking straight up quite a while ago. She’d thought things were going back to normal between them, the normal where she looked up to Lex as her smart, charming older brother. The normal where they played chess together for hours before Lionel and Lillian would call them downstairs for dinner. 

But now, she’s a fucking fool for even thinking that, isn’t she? 

“Put the gun down,” Lex tells her, and Lena just grips it harder. “Let’s talk like adults.” 

“The world isn’t safe with you in it.” And if her voice cracks, somehow, Lex doesn’t seem to notice. 

“You won’t kill me, Lena,” he spits, all bared teeth and blood-shot eyes. Lex is nothing but a silhouette in the doorway of her office until he closes in on her, reaching out, like a panther ready to pounce on its prey. “You don’t have the _guts._ ” 

He lunges and she pulls the trigger almost effortlessly. Lex staggers back with a hand clutched to his chest, and it only takes her a moment of hesitation before she’s pulling it again, and again, three times before he’s collapsed onto the floor, blood trickling from his mouth.

And he’s smiling. Grinning like a cheshire cat, raising a crimson-stained hand to point at her. “And just as I thought,” he chuckles, coughing and spitting out clumps of blood, “you are just like me after all.”

There are sirens blaring, red and blue flashing bright through the windows, and she barely registers the crack and thud as someone kicks down the door to her penthouse, several pairs of boots storming in and surrounding her. The gun drops from her hands, clatters to the ground and lands in the pool of Lex’s blood at her feet, and all Lena can do is _scream—_

“Lena? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, are you even dressed yet?” 

Lena squeezes her eyes shut, clenches her jaw tight to keep from saying something she’ll regret, and then breathes in deeply.

The air in Metropolis makes her sick.

Maybe it’s simply because her memories of the area are tainted now, but there’s a disconcerting shift in the air that makes her want to leave almost immediately. She can hear the insistent journalists buzzing outside the mansion like bees, waiting anxiously for a statement from her, begging for their break-out article about Lex Luthor finally being put to rest in the ground after a long, hard legal battle over his body.

There is a pretense, Lena figures, to these kinds of things. 

Her childhood is what some would refer to as tragic, and the gap of time where she straddles the line between child and adult is even more so; youth spent tormented and abandoned and bruised to the bone with a tyrant for a mother. 

But _Lex_ _—_

Before everything, Lex used to be her brother. Her _friend._

She had joined the chess club in boarding school solely because of Lex. She’d first gotten interested in science because of Lex. She learned how to fight because of Lex. 

She swallows the acidic taste in her mouth and stares listlessly at her reflection in the full length mirror of her bedroom. The strapless black dress is sinfully tight against her chest and then tapers like a second skin to the width of her hips, the silky fabric spilling elegantly halfway down her legs. It’s a dress she’s had for years but never worn before now, one she’d gotten when she was still with Jack back in Metropolis. 

“We have to look put together, Lena,” Lillian had told her earlier as she dug through the wardrobe for her, ignoring Lena’s less-than-elegant curses from the other room. “Especially _you._ Photographers will be there, journalists, it’ll all be on TV, no doubt.” 

Because that’s what she’s worried about. “Mother, it’s a fucking _funeral—“_

And yet, stepping out of the room, she is still the epitome of beauty, poise, and splendor; all flawless skin and plunging necklines and glittering jewelry. Lena scowls, stomach churning in disgust and something a lot like hatred for the position she’s in.

She looks too much like her mother. 

It’s a closed casket event; Lena isn’t surprised, considering one of the bullets had lodged itself right in Lex’s cheekbone, nevermind the fact that it’s been half a year already. There’s no speaker except for the priest — a _priest,_ Lena can’t even contain her scoff at that — and the burial itself takes less time than it did getting to this day in the first place. Lena just wants the whole thing to be over.

[But it’s never really _over,_ is it?]

By the time they get back, she needs a cigarette.

It’s just as she pulls one out that Lillian ascends the grand staircase of Lex’s old mansion, pausing just long enough to peer over the banister at her, green eyes sharp enough to cut into Lena’s very soul. Still dressed all in black. 

“It should have been you in that casket,” she spits, and then promptly turns around and disappears upstairs.

The lighter flicks, and Lena lets out a bitter laugh that is nothing but smoke in the air.

She doesn’t stay long in Lex’s mansion after that, especially when she can hear Lillian roaming around upstairs, footsteps thudding through the ceiling, doors slamming and glass breaking. She doesn’t go back to her penthouse, either, or even back to the office.

Instead, she goes to Alex— and this is the first step she takes towards monumentally fucking herself over.

It’s when the last vestiges of Winter start to bleed into early Spring that Lena realizes with a jarring shock down her spine that she and Alex are actually becoming good friends. Best friends, even. Even after several months have gone by, it still feels odd to her, having another best friend that isn’t Sam. 

The thing is, she doesn’t get attached to people so… _easily._ So willingly. But Alex had crawled her way under Lena’s skin so long ago, she had stopped trying to fight it. It’s a rare occurrence that Lena finds herself in, becoming best friends with someone so quickly and so effortlessly.

Which is why, when Alex kisses her and then immediately runs out of her penthouse, Lena doesn’t quite know how to react except to think, _‘what the fuck just happened?’_

She stands in the bathroom for a few seconds after that, lips still tingling and the secondhand taste of whiskey on her tongue, until she manages to shake herself out of it and realize what’s just taken place. Alex just _kissed_ her.

It’s even more baffling when Alex approaches her at group the next night, acting as though nothing happened; a bit awkward, sure, but nothing unlike her usual self. She strolls up to Lena, clad in the same worn-down leather jacket she’s always in, greeting her with a smile before she sees what Lena’s holding.

“Wait, you’re actually drinking that?” she gestures to the styrofoam cup of coffee clutched in Lena’s hand, disgusted. 

Lena blinks. If she’s being honest, she hadn’t even expected Alex to show up. In fact, she’d pretty much resigned herself to the possibility that she’d be on the receiving end of a post-humiliation shunning. “I need it. I didn’t sleep well last night,” she admits, and then reaches over to touch Alex’s arm in comfort. “I was worried about you after you left.” 

Alex scratches at the back of her neck, cheeks tinted pink. “Uh, yeah, I’m sorry about that. I honestly barely remember anything I did.” She laughs, too loud, and her eyes dart away from Lena’s every few seconds. 

Which is what tips her off to the fact that Alex knows exactly what she did. 

This is a classic denial; Lena has done it herself a few times, and she’s not afraid to admit that. And if it were anyone else, or even if it had happened under any other circumstances, Lena knows with absolute certainty that she wouldn’t let five seconds pass by without calling the person out. But somehow, she manages to keep her mouth shut about it throughout the entirety of group, and even hours afterwards. 

“Want to grab dinner?” Alex asks as they exit the church, and Lena nods without saying anything. She’ll let this slide for now; she’s not going to make Alex uncomfortable by confronting her about it.

But then days start going by. 

Lena doesn’t doesn’t bring up the kiss for three reasons. 

For one, Alex had been drunk; she’d tasted like liquor, for fuck’s sake. And two, she’d been in a panic. It was kind of Lena’s fault, really, for letting things get so out of hand that night. She’d left Alex to speak to the bartender, and that’s when everything had gone to shit. 

But the _kiss,_ well. The same thing happened with Sam, hadn’t it? Lena guesses it’s just an instinct, maybe, or a simple comfort thing. It’s not like she blames Alex for kissing her, especially since they’ve grown closer over the past couple months; they’re comfortable with each other. It’s only natural for Alex to seek out that kind of succor with her. 

And reason three is because Alex seems… perfectly fine. Totally and utterly not-fucked-up about it. 

So days go by, and they don’t talk about it.

Still, Lena thinks about it, though, more often than she’d like to admit. It’s constantly lingering in the back of her mind, like a barnacle stuck to the side of a ship, and she can’t scrape it off no matter how hard she tries. Frankly, it’s starting to get on her damn nerves. 

“Okay, well, I mean— do you like her?” is what Sam asks once she explains the whole situation over the phone, rambling and nervous in a way she hasn’t been in ages. She frowns, picking at a loose thread on her pajama pants. 

No, _Alex’s_ pajama pants. They’re practically hers now, though, considering how much _she_ wears them and _Alex_ doesn’t.

“Do _you_ think I like her?” 

Sam huffs, and Lena can picture her rolling her eyes, rubbing her face like she does whenever she’s exasperated. “Why are you asking me? You’re the one with the crush!” 

“So you _do_ think I like her.” 

“Lena, seriously. I’m not going to _tell_ you if you like this woman or not. You have to figure that out on your own,” Sam argues, and— isn’t that the whole reason Lena called her in the first place? 

She rolls her eyes. “You’re useless.” 

“I love you, too,” Sam murmurs affectionately in response, and Lena just rolls her eyes even harder. “Trust me, if you do have feelings for her, you’ll know.” 

_I knew with you, and look how that turned out,_ Lena can’t help but think, but she shoves those kinds of thoughts out of her head immediately. She and Sam never got the timing right, and she’s already long since learned to be okay with that, even if it still hurts to think about sometimes.

“Maybe you _should_ talk about it,” Sam suggests. “Instead of just pretending it didn’t happen. It _did,_ and that means something whether you want it to or not.” 

“Damn you for always being the rational one,” Lena curses, and Sam just laughs. Before she can say anything else though, there’s a loud crash and a voice distinctly Ruby’s in the background, and Sam is cursing in her typical Sam way, a muttered, “Fiddlesticks,” coming through the phone before she says, louder, “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later?” 

Lena sighs. “Alright. Have fun,” she bids, and Sam just laughs bitterly before hanging up, leaving Lena with nothing to do but listen to the dial tone for a long moment. 

For the next few days, it’s like the universe just doesn’t _want_ her to bring the kiss up, because she doesn’t get the chance. Mainly because Alex won’t message her back. She and Alex don’t spend _every_ night together, but they do most nights, which is why Lena finds it somewhat concerning that Alex hasn’t texted her in two days to confirm plans. 

She checks her phone for the fifth time as she descends the creaky church steps for group, wrapping her coat tighter around herself. Alex is a bad texter, sure, but she’s never one to leave Lena on _delivered_ for more than 24 hours.

 **_Group is in fifteen,_ ** Lena reminds her, and feels somewhat foolish as that text joins the stack of eight others above it, but she sends another anyway. **_Alex Danvers, do NOT leave me alone here!_ **

Group therapy in the muggy basement of a semi-abandoned church was _not_ her first choice. 

It was more Sam’s choice than anything, with her insistent pleading for Lena to get some sort of help. She’d meant professional, one-on-one time with a shrink, no doubt— but instead, Lena had stumbled upon a slightly faded poster downtown for group counseling sessions held here, and she’d checked it out just for the hell of it. 

If she’s being completely honest, she doesn’t know why she’s continued coming here. Maybe it was the universe’s way of forcing her and Alex together. 

“Lena,” J’onn’s booming voice reaches above the others chatting. Alex still isn’t here yet, and Lena has been not-so-subtly checking the clock on the wall every five seconds. “May I?” He gestures to the seat next to her, and she nods politely. 

“How are you?” he asks— and it’s odd that he’s asking her outside of the circle, ten minutes before the session’s even begun. “How are things with your mother?”

“Terrible, as always.” She shrugs; it’s been long enough now that the thought of Lillian not loving her doesn’t bother her as much anymore. “She wishes me dead.” 

J’onn doesn’t even flinch, but he does look at her with sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that.” 

“Don’t be,” she lets out something between a sigh and a laugh, crossing her legs. Another glance at the clock, and no sign of Alex has her fidgeting. It’s the exasperated facial expressions and eye-rolls she exchanges with Alex that keep her sane down here, after all. 

“You and Alex—“ 

“—are just friends,” Lena cuts in immediately, not even letting him finish. Had Alex told _him_ about this kiss? 

J’onn’s eyebrows shoot up at the interruption, leaning back slowly in his chair. “I was going to suggest the two of you come over for dinner one evening. My father is in National City, and I’d love it if you two could meet him.” 

The question takes her aback, before the initial shock of what he’s asking her sinks in. J’onn wants her _and_ Alex to come to dinner? “I’m sorry,” she leans forward, face hot, “but why me? You’re much closer with Alex.” 

J’onn nods in agreement. “I am. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen Alex make a friend like you, Lena,” he explains genuinely, and Lena feels the tension melt away in her shoulders. “I’d love it if you both could come.” 

_Oh._

“That would be— great.” She nods, jerkily, uncertain. “Yes. And I’m sure Alex would love to.” 

Alex, who still isn’t here. She feels her phone burning a hole in the pocket of her pea coat, and aches to grab it and call, ask, _where the hell are you?_ but then J’onn is scooting his chair back and beckoning everyone over, the clock finally striking nine. 

By the time group is over for the night, Alex doesn’t show up, and Lena tries to ignore the sudden worry that blooms in her chest when her call goes straight to voicemail. 

So, she does the only thing she _can_ do. 

“Where the fuck have you been?” is the first thing she asks when the door to Alex’s apartment opens with a long creak, pushing inside before Alex even has time to greet her. “I was left alone in that church basement— oh. You look like absolute _shit.”_

Pale and sweaty, grey under her eyes and chapped lips, she almost looks like Lex in his final moments. Then Alex lets out a weak laugh that turns into a wheezing cough, and, oh, God. She’s _sick._ Lena cannot get sick, especially this week, when she has a conference in Gotham so soon. “You’re sick. What are you doing? Get in bed!” 

She gets a half-assed glare in response. “I _was_ in bed,” Alex snaps, but it comes out weak, voice cracking, and it only makes Lena raise a brow as Alex blushes. “Shut up.” 

It’s only once she heads towards the bedroom again, blanket dragging on the floor behind her, that she seems to notice Lena keeping her distance. She rolls her eyes and flops down onto the bed. “I’m not contagious, Lena.” But then she coughs again, harsh and wet, and Lena’s eyes narrow in suspicion. 

“It’s chronic bronchitis,” Alex explains as she bundles up under a good few blankets. “I get it around this time of year like clockwork. I’ve been trying to sleep it off.” 

“So you’re _not_ contagious?” Lena checks, and when Alex rolls her eyes and nods, she feels slightly better. “Right. Good. I’ll stay then.” 

“Nice to know you’d leave me to suffer alone if I were,” Alex huffs, but she doesn’t really mean it by the small smile she gives her. “But you really don’t need to stay, you know. I’m going to be sleeping most of the time anyways, and—”

Lena cuts her off with a swift, “Oh, shut the fuck up.” 

Alex reels back. “What?” 

“Stop being so prideful. I’m staying with you whether you like it or not.” She’s already shedding her coat, her purse sitting next to Alex’s couch, and she makes herself at home as she circles the kitchen, grabbing Alex a glass of water and herself a mug of hot tea.

Alex tries arguing again, “You really don’t have to—”

“I’m fine with it,” Lena assures her, setting the glass of water on the nightstand before sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over to feel Alex’s head. It’s warm, but not too hot. “Trust me.” 

“But—”

“I was never taken care of when I got ill,” Lena interrupts her again, and she snaps her mouth shut, looking sheepish and just a bit more pale. “Not even Lex would comfort me. So the least I can do is be there for _you_.” 

“Never?” Alex asks, sounding more out of genuine curiosity than out of sympathy. Somehow the lack of pity makes the question easier to answer. 

“With the Luthors, no… But as a child, my real mother used to make me soup and read to me whenever I had a cold.” 

Alex seems to take in this information carefully, and she doesn’t blame her. Lena only talks about her family once on a blue moon, and rarely does she ever talk about her biological mother. It’s only normal for Alex to collect these bits and pieces and store them away for later; it’s what Lena does with her, after all. 

“Do you want to sleep?” 

For a moment, Alex hesitates before shaking her head. “I don’t think I can fall back asleep,” she tells her, and Lena feels a brief burst of guilt at waking her up in the first place, before Alex brushes it off. “You’re fine, I was half-awake before you knocked anyways. Could we just… watch a movie or something?” 

It takes some careful maneuvering to get Alex and all her blankets to the couch, with Lena setting up pillows and the recliner just right. Almost as soon as they’re settled, Alex sinks into Lena’s side, head resting against her shoulder. 

It’s halfway through the action packed buddy-cop movie that Alex had insisted on putting on, when she admits into Lena’s neck, “You know, my sister and I solved a murder once.”

Lena’s fingers still where they’re combing gently through Alex’s slightly-damp hair as she processes this new information. “Excuse me?” she asks, wondering if she heard her right. But Alex nods matter-of-factly, tilting her head to look up at her. “You’re serious?” 

“Yeah. Kara’s childhood best friend, Kenny, was murdered when we were younger. We figured out who it was and almost got killed ourselves, before he was caught and arrested.” 

Lena blinks. “I just have… _so_ many questions.” 

Alex just chuckles, the most she can do without dissolving into a violent coughing fit, her breath warm on Lena’s neck. “Kara practically begged me to go into the police academy, after that, but I didn’t.” 

“Why not?” Lena shifts slightly, her arm falling asleep where Alex’s head is resting against it. They aren’t even paying any mind to the movie now, focused only on each other. “You’d have been a great cop.” 

Alex shrugs. “I just always leaned more towards the military. My dad, uh— he was a Sergeant Major in the Marines, and I always looked up to him, you know? So I turned eighteen and enlisted a week after my birthday. And God, my mother was _pissed_.” 

Lena breathes out a soft laugh. Alex isn’t looking at her anymore, eyes back on the TV screen, but Lena stares at her for a few more moments before looking away. 

_Maybe you should talk about it,_ Sam had told her just a couple days ago, _instead of just pretending it didn’t happen._

She’s right. They can’t keep pretending it didn’t happen, especially since it’s all that’s on Lena’s mind now, even while looking at Alex, pale and sick and akin to a days-old corpse. It _happened,_ and they need to talk about it whether they want to or not. 

Alex coughs again, a heaving, mucus-filled cough, and Lena tries to hold back a grimace. 

Maybe another day.

“When do you leave?” Alex asks her later, as the end credits roll and they make their way back to the bedroom. 

“Sunday evening,” she sits on the edge of the bed and watches Alex take a few pills. “The conference is Monday morning.” 

“I hate that you’re going to Gotham,” Alex grimaces at the thought, and Lena can’t help but sympathize — Gotham, of all places, is probably not the best city for her to be in. But Wayne Enterprises had offered a partnership that could change the future of L-Corp, and Lena isn’t going to pass that up.

“Well, you can always join me. Act as my personal security guard for the day.” 

It’s a joke — clearly, she doesn’t mean it, at least not fully. But Alex straightens up in bed, a thoughtful crease forming between her brows as she looks at Lena. “Could I?” 

Lena blinks in surprise, taken aback by the eager suggestion. “I was kidding, Alex,” she argues, but Alex shrugs, sitting up so the covers pool at her waist. “You’re serious? You want to come with me to Gotham?” 

Alex scoots closer, and she’s warm, but Lena can’t tell if that’s from a potential fever or just _her._ “If something were to happen, I’d feel better being there. I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt.”

It takes her a long moment to process this. It’s not that she doesn’t know that Alex cares about her, of course. But it’s the first time she’s acknowledged it like this, so softly, in that tone of voice, and Lena feels herself blushing before she can stop it. She tries to brush off these kinds of feelings before they become too noticeable.

“Alright. But only if you’re feeling better by then,” she warns. “If you still sound like you did tonight, you’re not coming.”

Alex nods, but Lena can’t help but have the sneaking suspicion that even if she isn’t better, she’ll try to get on the jet with her anyways.

* * *

Thankfully, by the time Lena’s flight is scheduled, Alex _is_ feeling better. Still coughing once in a while, but there’s no fever, and she knocks on the door of Lena’s penthouse with a suitcase in hand at three in the afternoon on the dot.

“You’re ridiculous,” Lena tells her, but moves aside to let her in anyway. “Our flight leaves at six.” 

Alex just shrugs. “I wanted to make sure I was on time.” 

* * *

Gotham has always been a dark and dreary city. Tonight it’s raining, their boots splashing through dark puddles as they weave through crowded streets, the city lights shining above them. 

“You were great up there,” Alex tells her as they walk together. Even a couple hours after the conference has ended, Lena’s heart is still pounding, as it always does whenever she makes a big speech or attends an event like that one. “For a few minutes, I honestly felt really interested on how L-Corp’s tech could benefit the environment.” 

Lena chuckles, squeezing Alex’s hand where it rests against her arm. “Thank you. I was worried it would be too boring—“

“Oh, it was,” Alex corrects her. “But I think the alcohol helped.” 

“Well, that explains it,” Lena laughs, rolling her eyes as Alex just smirks at her. “You’re sure you’re okay with attending this party? I know you must be exhausted,” she asks as they finally come to a stop in front of the hotel. Standing in front of the doors is a tall, tuxedoed man who nods politely at them as they pass by. 

“I’ll be fine,” Alex reassures her. “As long as we can get some food.” 

There is soft, lilting music drifting through the room, and the hushed murmur of refined laughter and strict conversation. There are people everywhere, lining the walls and circling the dance floor, although not too many of them— this kind of wealth in Gotham is elite, old money and young ‘entrepreneurs’ who only profited off their parent’s money. 

Lena eyes them all distastefully from the doorway. “God, I hate these things,” she mutters in Alex’s ear as they step onto the floor. 

Alex looks at her, surprised. “Really?” she gestures towards the dining room, arms splayed out. “I mean— isn’t this your whole… thing? Rich people and luxurious parties?” 

Lena side-eyes her. “Trust me. You’ll hate it too, by the time it’s over.” 

They circle the floor, taking in the crowd and grabbing champagne glasses on their way. There are too many obscenely affluent old men shuffling around in finely pressed Armani suits, and even more of their beautiful, cheating wives strapped loosely to their arms. 

Lena would know. Before Lionel passed, her horrid mother was one of them. 

She finally spots Bruce Wayne in the center of the room, surrounded by several smiling colleagues. Still wrapped around Alex’s arm, she makes her way over, plastering on a charming smile of her own. “Lena!” His deep, booming voice rings out over the rest of the chatter, and Lena’s forced to let go of Alex as Bruce stretches out a big hand for them to shake. “That was an amazing discussion we had this evening. I really feel like Wayne Enterprises is going to benefit from this partnership with L-Corp.”

“Bruce,” she greets. “I do hope so. New business partners and investors have become ten times more important for my company, you understand.” 

Bruce nods. “Yes, of course.” Then, glancing at Alex, he winks, “Now, are you going to introduce me to the lovely lady on your arm?” 

Lena grins. She motions towards Alex, who shifts uncomfortably under the new attention, but smiles politely at Bruce as she takes a sip of her champagne. “ _This_ is Alex Danvers. She’s a very good friend of mine.” 

“Ah, yes.” He smiles even wider. “Well, I hope you enjoy the event. Please, help yourself to anything! Mingle!” 

He turns away, shoes tapping against the floor. Lena turns to Alex and shrugs. “Shall we?” 

Throughout the first hour of the night, she tries hard to enjoy the party, but conversing with the other attendees is another thing Lena despises about these events. She’s _good_ at it — it’s impossible for her not to be, considering Lillian had groomed both her and Lex for years for this exact thing — but that doesn't mean she has to enjoy it. 

“I’ve been calling you.” 

Lena tenses up, a shiver running down her spine at the voice that rings out behind her. When she whirls around, Lillian is staring at her coldly, clad in a sparkling dress and heels that make her tower over Lena. 

“Mother,” she grits her teeth, and sees Alex’s eyebrows shoot up at the realization. Why is Lillian in Gotham? Has she been here the whole time? Had she attended the conference? “What are you doing here?” 

Lillian rests a cold hand on her, and pristine nails dig into the delicate skin of Lena’s forearm. “Who is this, dear?” she asks instead of answering Lena’s question. 

Alex seems to shake herself out of her shock, because she clears her throat and holds her hand out for Lillian to shake, smiling politely. “Uh— Alex Danvers. I’m a friend of Lena’s.” 

Lillian doesn’t take her hand, only eyeing her suspiciously. Alex's arm drops awkwardly back down to her side. She turns back to Lena without even a word. “Lena, I’d like for us to speak. _Privately_.” 

She says this last word with a pointed look towards Alex, who eyes Lena with a frown. Lena nods and watches her slip away, towards a group of tables set up near the back wall. 

“What do you want, Mother? What are you doing here?” 

Lillian rolls her eyes. “I came to attend the conference. I can’t very well allow you to mess up the one thing Lex left behind, can I?” 

“When I took over Luthorcorp, you wanted no part in it—“ 

“I had my own business to attend to,” Lillian snaps. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping an eye on you.” 

A waitress stops by them with a tray of drinks. Lena grabs one and downs it before setting the empty glass back on the tray, sending the shocked waitress off with a nod. “You’re not going to ruin this night for me, Mother.”

Lillian just smiles. Tight and cold. “You can’t keep avoiding me, Lena.”

Then she’s gone, just as quickly as she’d appeared. If it weren’t for the way her presence and the conversation leave Lena with a bad taste in her mouth, she would question if her mother was even here at all. 

But even with Lillian gone, it seems she can’t catch a break, because not a second later, Morgan Edge approaches her with a fake smile and a thin blonde woman on his arm, much too young for him. 

“Lena Luthor,” he greets slowly. “Well, it’s been far too long.” 

“So it has.” She sips from her drink, repressing the already-overwhelming urge to roll her eyes at his mere presence. “I’d like to say it’s a pleasure seeing you again, but, well…” 

“We always did like to bicker, didn’t we?” He laughs, too loud, too fake; usually, Lena knows this game — they’ll flirt with her and she’ll laugh along and then they’ll trade their respective business cards with each other, and the cycle repeats with the next person she encounters. But this is Morgan, and the annoyance is already setting in before he's had a chance to say more than two sentences.

He turns to his date, gesturing as if she's supposed to care. “Marcela, this is Lena Luthor, the CEO of L-Corp. More importantly, the sister of the late Lex Luthor.” 

Lena’s eyes narrow. “Marcela,” she greets, shaking the blonde’s hand. “I have to ask, what's a woman like yourself doing with Edge here _?”_

Morgan’s jaw clenches at the slight. Lena just smirks. 

“Say, how's your mother? I just saw you two talking,” he cuts right to the chase, because Morgan Edge has never been the kind to tip-toe around certain subjects. Always one to get straight to the point. “It looked tense. She’s still grieving, I’m sure,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. 

Lena tightens her grip around the stem of her champagne glass, her smirk dropping. “Yes, she is. Would your mother like to be the next to mourn?” 

Morgan rips himself away from the blonde to step closer to her, a nasty sneer on his face. There’s already an itch under her skin, her nerves tingling and burning. “I’d watch your mouth, Lena,” he warns quietly, furiously. “There are a lot of people here who would drink to your downfall.” 

"And what about yours, Edge?

Her eyes are sweeping the room, desperately searching for Alex so they can leave — already, barely an hour and a half into the event — but the woman in question beats her to it, a familiar, strong hand gripping her bicep, tugging her away from him before he can say anything more. “Hey, come on, let’s sit down.” 

Morgan pushes past them harshly, nearly spilling her drink, and the blonde rushes after him dutifully. Behind his back, Lena flips him off.

As soon as she’s in her seat, Alex in front of her, she downs the rest of her glass and flags down a waitress for more. “Did you hear any of that?” she asks, feeling flushed with something akin to humiliation. Or maybe it’s guilt.

“No,” Alex shakes her head, and somehow, Lena believes her. “You just— you looked like you needed to get out of that conversation, so—“ 

“I did. Thank you.” 

She doesn’t tell Alex why, but Alex seems to realize it’s not something she’s keen to talk about, because she doesn’t push it. Suddenly it seems like all eyes are on Lena now, cold, judging. She shifts in her seat, takes another sip of her drink. The itch beneath her skin grows stronger. She needs a cigarette. 

She’s already heading towards the front doors. “I’ll be right back.” 

“Hey, no! I’m coming with you.” Alex is up and following her before she can argue, and she’s barely made it halfway out of the hotel lobby before she’s flicking her lighter, the end of her cigarette glowing orange before she inhales, slow and deep, an immediate rush of calm overtaking her. 

“I’m not a fool,” she snaps suddenly, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the party. “I knew that after Lex, no one would treat me the same, but—“ She cuts off, face burning. She feels like crying suddenly, which is so fucking _stupid_ , but she holds it back. “Fuck them.” 

“Lena—“ 

“I’d like to go back to the room.” 

Alex doesn’t argue with her. They pass the dining room and head straight for the elevators, and almost as soon as they’re in the room, Lena feels her resolve breaking more and more. She drops her bag in front of the door, kicking off her heels and immediately rummaging through the mini bar. Alex lingers behind her, biting her lip. 

“I shouldn’t have come tonight.” She’s muttering to herself as she uncaps a miniature sized liquor bottle. “First, it’s my fucking _mother—_ and Morgan Edge, don’t even get me started…” 

“Lena, I’m sorry. They shouldn’t have treated you like that.” 

Lena whirls around. “Well, they weren’t wrong,” she laughs, bitter and full of self-loathing. Her eyes burn and she doesn’t want to fucking cry, not in front of Alex, not here, not like this. _Fuck._ “I can’t pretend it didn’t happen— I can’t pretend this isn’t _warranted_.” 

Alex steps forward, a hand coming down to her shoulder, and the touch is nearly enough to break her completely, like she’s as fragile as glass. She _hates_ it. “Lena, what—“ 

“I killed my brother!” She’s finally crying now, her voice cracking, throat sore from trying to hold back the tears for so long. “Don’t I deserve this?” 

“No!” Alex snaps, slamming the door to the mini bar so hard that the bottles rattle inside. “No, Lena, nobody does.”

But Lena can barely hear her, Lex’s dying words echoing in her mind. _And just as I thought, you are just like me after all._ Killing Lex had made her no better than him. 

“No, Lena, you are so _good_.” And— shit, had she voiced that aloud? 

Dark, warm brown eyes are on hers now, and she practically melts underneath Alex’s strong gaze. “You did what you _had_ to do. And— and those rich, condescending _assholes_ who’ve never experienced shit in their lives won’t understand that.” 

Lena swallows past a thick lump in her throat. She’s still crying, the tears burning their way down her cheeks, streaking mascara down her face, but she manages to chuckle at the way Alex curses them. “Hey, there’s that smile.”

“Stop it,” she sniffs, wiping at her eyes before any more tears can fall. 

“Look, Lena,” Alex turns serious again, stepping closer. “I— I killed a lot of innocent people throughout my time in the marines. Innocent civilians who were just considered collateral damage, people who didn’t deserve to die. And from what I’ve heard? Lex was _not_ an innocent man. He tried to attack you first. He deserved what he got.” 

Lena slumps forward, closer to her, enough so that she can feel Alex’s breath against her skin. 

“You’re _good_ ,” Alex repeats sternly. “You’ve always been good. _Fuck_ your mother, _fuck_ that Morgan guy, and whoever else wants to treat you like you‘re not the most amazing woman they’ve ever met.” 

Lena blinks hard. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the way Alex had kissed her arises once again. How can she say things like _that_ , and then turn around and pretend nothing happened that night? 

“Alex, we need to talk about—“

It’s a careful touch at first, so careful she’s almost unable to feel it, if it weren't for the fact every cell in her body seems to be perfectly in tune with Alex Danvers at the moment. It's slow, agonizing. Two fingertips, calloused from years of harsh work, reaching up and brushing against her cheek again, a gesture that’s just barely lighter than the warm breath sighed against her mouth. 

“I know. I know,” Alex nods, eyebrows pulling together. “We do, I know, but— can I just—“ 

They’re suddenly pressed so close together that every one of Lena’s nerve-endings are on fire, her entire body practically straining forward, desperate to be closer even though what was left of the gap between them had dissipated just moments ago. 

“Alex,” she whispers, and her voice is so quiet, but Alex’s eyebrow twitches up, hearing it anyways. Lena shakes her head. “What are you doing?” 

“I don’t know,” Alex replies truthfully, and Lena curls her lips in, nervous. “Are you okay with this?” 

She is. She doesn’t have the willpower to deny that she’s completely and utterly okay with the way Alex is touching her right now, and the way she’s looking at her. 

Except— 

“I don’t want to fuck this up,” she admits, and the two fingers turn into a palm, sliding down the line of her jaw to cup her chin. A thumb traces a burning path over her bottom lip. 

“You won’t,” Alex insists, brows furrowed and eyes almost intimidatingly serious. “What is there to fuck up?”

It’s hard to make her tongue move, to make her lips work properly, when Alex is looking at her like that. Every word risks bringing her into contact with a soft, pink mouth. She’s never wanted anything more. She’s never _feared_ anything more. 

“Where do I even begin to answer that?” she scoffs, barely holding back from letting out a self-deprecating chuckle. This is her default, isn’t it? The deep-rooted self doubt and insecurity has always been the cornerstone of who she is. But Alex shakes her head, and they’re so close that their noses brush together at the action. Her mouth brushes up against the corner of Lena’s lips, trapping a whimper behind her teeth.

She tries to pull away, hesitant, “I don’t want to force you into anything—” 

“Is that what you think you’re doing?” Alex asks, genuinely curious, and Lena finds her head shaking without permission from her brain, because, no, she doesn’t, actually; Alex _wants_ her, it’s clear in the way her eyes fog up, the way her fingertips press deep into Lena’s skin. “Good. Because you’re not.”

There has to be more than that, though, right? She had objections to this exact sort of thing. A list of bullet points — or had she numbered it instead? Something solid, concrete, written down on paper to make sure she stuck to it. But there’s no paper with her now, and when her mouth falls open it’s to let loose a quiet sound of need. 

_Fuck._ She doesn’t think she has the strength to deny Alex anything.

“I know,” she breathes out, but she’s already moving, hands on Alex’s hips, tugging them closer. If her own body is on fire, Alex’s is ablaze, burning her from the inside out with her proximity. Her hands slide up Alex’s torso, squeezing gently and listening to the subtle yet sharp intake of breath. She feels like a teenager again, suddenly, all trembling hands and butterflies in her stomach, every part of her buzzing with frantic, desperate energy. 

“Do you trust me?” Alex’s voice is lighter now that she sees Lena softening. It’s teasing almost, and she kisses Lena lightly, barely making contact, and Lena tries and fails not to press deeper into it. “Do you trust that I want this?” 

“Yes,” she breathes out, and there’s something in the air that changes around them, after that. 

“Do you want—” Alex hesitates; her eyes flicker up and to the side and then down again.“Do _you_ want _me?”_

 _“Yes.”_ It’s almost something of a groan, a plea, a confession of a deadly sin ripped from her. It’s an undeniable pull, and fighting against it would be a lost cause. But, "This isn’t— this won’t change anything,” she reassures, more herself than Alex, as she feels the cool metal of Alex's right hand curl around the back of her neck. 

“Nope,” Alex agrees, just before she leans down to capture Lena's mouth once more.

Lena knows this part, the primal, strong need for contact, and she knows that _that_ is what she needs right now. The next touch of their lips is nothing like it was the first time. Instead, it’s hard and bruising, more the clashing of teeth and tongues than anything else, as the tension reaches its peak between them. Lena’s hands go to Alex’s hair, holding her there, and Alex presses her back into the wall.

“Room?” she murmurs against Lena’s mouth, breath warm against her lips, and Lena can do nothing but nod.


	5. Chapter 5

so yes, we could kiss. 

i could kiss you and you could kiss me. 

there's no science, plane ticket or clock stopping us. 

but if we kiss, it will end the world. 

—  _ i wrote this for you, _ iain thomas. 

* * *

When Alex wakes up, it’s to soft golden light streaming through the curtains and a numbness in her arm where a weight has cut off the circulation. Lena is still curled up into her, face pressed into the crook of her neck. She’s almost deathly afraid to move and disturb the peace, but  _ fuck,  _ her arm is starting to tingle now, pins and needles shooting all the way up to her shoulder. If only Lena had snuggled up on the  _ other  _ side of her.

“Uh— Lena,” she whispers, reaching over to brush a strand of dark hair from Lena’s face. She looks so  _ peaceful _ , in a way she rarely does awake, her chest rising and falling slowly.“Lena, wake up.”

Lena just huffs, burrowing further into Alex’s side. “No, you’re warm,” she mumbles in reply, voice raspy with sleep. 

“But—“

“My pillow,” Lena adds, almost as an afterthought. 

“That’s too bad,” Alex retorts, cringing as the pins and needles get worse as Lena shifts slightly. “I can’t feel my arm.” 

The only thing Lena does is move her head, which, yeah, helps a little. Still, there’s another problem at hand, one she’s just been made painfully aware of. So, as much as she knows she’ll miss the warmth of Lena’s body against hers, she groans, “Get  _ up _ . I have to pee.” 

That gets Lena moving. She rolls over and buries her face in the pillow instead, and Alex breathes a sigh of relief once she can finally get the blood in her arm moving again. The trek to the bathroom is a short one, and almost as soon as the door is shut she’s leaning up against the marble sink with a heavy sigh. 

The memories of last night come rushing back to her; the party, Lena’s breakdown, the kiss. She and Lena had  _ kissed  _ last night, different from when Alex was drunk. This was real. This meant something, to Alex, at least.

Did it mean anything to Lena? 

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? They were strangers with a mutually beneficial agreement, and then they were actual  _ friends,  _ and now Alex isn’t sure  _ what _ they are. This is the second time they’ve done this during an emotional moment — is it just a simple comfort thing between them? Is it just a weird extension of the ‘therapy sessions’ they’ve been conducting over the past couple months? Or is it the start of something that Alex can’t help but shiver at the thought of? 

She hasn’t felt this way since—

_ No. You’re too in your head. You need to breathe.  _

She always gets like this. Blows things out of proportion, thinks that something is a bigger deal than it is. It probably meant nothing to Lena. 

Fuck, she’ll have to talk to Kara about this later. Kara’s the one who’s  _ good  _ with feelings, and Kara can give her an outsider’s opinion on it. Kara won’t tell her that it means something just to give her some false hope that she won’t get rejected. 

Except—

“It  _ totally  _ means something!” Kara exclaims as soon as she whisper-yells the situation into the phone.

Okay, so this is… not what Alex expected to hear. “Kara, no. You’re supposed to talk me  _ out  _ of this,” she argues, but she can feel the excitement her sister holds for her even through the phone, and already knows it’s a lost cause. 

“What? This is amazing!” she squeals, oblivious. “Why would I talk you out of it?” 

“Uh, no, it’s not. Lena clearly doesn’t like me like that. It wasn’t, like, an  _ ‘I like you’  _ kiss.” 

Kara’s quiet for a second. “Did Lena say that? That she doesn’t like you?” 

Alex chews at her bottom lip, adjusting the phone against her ear. “Well, _ no, _ but—”

“And that’s your problem,” Kara interjects. “You always do this, Alex. You don’t know that Lena’s going to reject you. Why won’t you just let yourself be happy this time? You deserve it more than anyone.”

_ That’s debatable.  _ “Maybe I won’t bring it up, like last time.” 

And her first mistake was calling Kara. Now her second is letting  _ that  _ little detail slip out without thinking, because she has to pull the phone away from her ear to avoid being deafened by Kara’s scream. “Last time? You’ve kissed before?” 

“Yes, and it was terrible. I was drunk and upset and— and it wasn’t how I wanted our first kiss to be.” That last part escapes her on accident, but she doesn’t try to deny it or correct herself. Over the phone, Kara seems to be taking this in. 

“You wanted there to be a first kiss?” she finally asks, and Alex shrugs despite her sister not being able to see her. 

“Yeah,” she sighs, and it feels a lot like she’s admitting it to herself more than she’s admitting it to Kara. “And I fucked it up. And now, with last night, I’m just—”

“You could, I don’t know,  _ talk to her _ about it.” 

Alex grimaces. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, Kara.” 

Kara scoffs over the phone. “I’m serious,” she scolds, and Alex sighs, rubbing at her temples. Kara  _ is  _ right, but that doesn’t mean she has to like the advice. “Why don’t you ask her out to dinner to talk about it?” 

“You’re expanding on your worst idea,” Alex deadpans, but she knows Kara’s not going to let it go until she knows they’ve gotten their shit together. “Fine. Yeah, maybe.  _ Not  _ as a date, though!” she adds sternly.

“That’s not what I’m gonna tell Eliza,” Kara sing-songs. 

This is just a tactic to annoy her, Alex knows. Saying things like that to exasperate her is Kara’s specialty. Still, she takes the bait because she just can’t seem to help herself. “No. Kara, I swear to God—”

“She’ll be so happy you’re dating again,” Kara continues on, and Alex feels dread seep into her bones at the mere thought of her mother knowing she’s dating.

Even though she’s  _ not  _ dating. Because she and Lena aren’t together, and this isn’t going to be a date just because Kara’s insisting that it is. 

“Actually,” Kara suddenly turns serious, like she’s just remembered something bad, and Alex straightens up at the tone of her voice. “Speaking of Eliza…” 

“Kara, what is it?” Immediately, a thousand different scenarios rush through her mind at once, all of which are not things Alex wants to think about. 

“Everything’s fine!” Kara assures her quickly, and she blows out a relieved breath, but the worry isn’t completely gone as Kara continues speaking like she has terrible news. “It’s just, I know this is hard for you to talk about… but the anniversary of Jeremiah’s death is coming up. And I’m sure Eliza would really appreciate if we could make it down there this year—”

“To Midvale?” Alex cuts in, a bad feeling already taking hold of her. She hasn’t been back to Midvale since a few years before she was discharged, but even during those few brief trips, going back always reminded her of times she’d rather forget. 

Like her dad, for instance. 

God, she’d rather go back to talking about her situation with Lena.

“I don’t know, Kara.” It’s not the most desirable thought, traveling back to Midvale for the anniversary of her father’s death. She scrambles for excuses to dish out. “I’ll have to take off from work, you know, and I’ll miss group, and—”

“Please?” Kara asks, and, shit, Alex has always been bad at denying her anything. “Besides, I think it’d be really good for you to spend this time with family.”

She’s… got a point, Alex’s gotta give it to her. The past decade, she’s always been away during this time of year. When she wasn’t fighting for her life, she’d be distracting herself by hitting the bars near base, blacking out before she could even think about him enough to get upset.

“Okay,” she agrees, nodding to herself. “Okay, I’ll come.” 

“Thank you!” Kara squeals in her ear, like she hasn’t just confirmed plans for what’s probably going to be the worst weekend of her life. “We’ll carpool!” 

Fuck, she already regrets this.

Lena is still snuggled up in bed when Alex comes out of the bathroom, looking dead to the world, still as a statue. It’s only when Alex slips back under the covers that she moves again, immediately curling up against Alex’s side like she had been before, without even cracking an eye open. 

Alex shuts her eyes and lets the warmth of Lena’s body embrace her.

“Want to get breakfast? I know of a great diner here with french toast to die for,” Lena mumbles against her, and Alex freely allows her attention to be drawn elsewhere, to the thought of french toast and coffee. 

“Yeah,” she mumbles back, letting Lena pull her up and out of bed. 

Still half-asleep but starving, Lena dresses fairly quickly. Alex, though, takes her time pulling a pair of pants on and throwing a flimsy sweater over her head, perfect for the lukewarm weather outside, and she’s just getting around to tying the laces of her shoes when Lena huffs dramatically from the doorway.

“No, take your time,” she scoffs when Alex shoots her a questionable look, “I don’t mind waiting.” 

It’s clearly sarcastic, and the impatient tapping of her boot tells Alex she  _ does  _ mind waiting, very much so. Which is why, naturally, Alex listens to her. 

As soon as she recognizes Alex’s even slower movements, Lena rolls her eyes and grabs at the front of her sweater, scowling at her. “You’re a child,” she snaps, green eyes seeming to stare right down into Alex’s soul. 

“You told me to take my time,” Alex defends, but she only receives a slap on the arm in response, with Lena stalking across the hotel room and wrenching open the door. 

The diner Lena had suggested sits downtown, between a run-down convenience store and a vape shop. It’s sketchy at best, all chipped bricks and dusty windows and it’s the sort of place that Alex would expect  _ Lena _ , of all people, not to touch with a ten foot pole. 

“Uh… this is it?” she asks doubtfully, glancing towards Lena, who isn’t phased at all by the overall look of the place. Her hand automatically drifts towards her hip, where her service weapon sits, waiting to be drawn at any sight of danger. “You’re not  _ trying  _ to get mugged so I can save you, right?” 

“I had the same reaction at first,” Lena chuckles at the dubious expression on Alex’s face, reaching forward to pull the door open with a loud creak. “Just trust me.” 

The inside of the diner looks better than the outside, clean and neat, with quiet, old music filtering through from an ancient-looking jukebox in the corner. There’s only a few customers scattered here and there, but they all look generally content to be there and not like they just got released from Arkham, so Alex tries to relax a bit as they take a seat. 

As they flip through thick, laminated menus, Lena smiles softly, like she’s remembering something. “When I was in college, I worked with a friend of mine in developing nanotechnology to cure diseases,” she explains, voice quiet, reminiscent, but loud enough for Alex to hear. “We came to a conference here before, and he brought me here for breakfast one morning. I had the same reaction as you, but once I tried the food, I never doubted his choices again.” 

Alex rests her chin on her palm, taking this bit of information in. “Well, what do you recommend, then?” she questions. “I trust you, so you better not let me down, Luthor.” 

Lena huffs out a laugh that makes Alex’s chest warm. “Like I said, the french toast is to die for. That, and their hot cocoa is  _ heavenly _ .”

With a resolute nod, Alex shuts her menu completely. “Alright. French toast and hot cocoa it is.” 

By the time their food arrives, Alex’s stomach has started grumbling, right on the dot. The french toast is practically doused in melted butter and powdered sugar, strawberries on the side, and to any outsider looking in, it might seem like she hasn’t eaten in a week with the way she devours it. 

It reminds her vaguely of the mornings she’d spend as a child, during the months her dad was home from deployment and her mother would make breakfast for them every morning; it was a feast of pancakes, toast, bacon, and eggs. One bite and Alex is suddenly back there, sitting at the kitchen table and listening to her dad crack jokes about how Eliza’s cooking isn’t much better than the MREs he’d eat on base. 

She remembers the way he would exchange a look with her as Eliza smacked him across the back of the head with a scoff, warning him that  _ “tomorrow, you’ll get nothing.”  _

After his death, her mother didn’t make breakfast like that ever again.

“Hey,” Lena’s voice brings her back to the present, two fingers snapping in front of her face. “I lost you for a moment. Where did you just go?” 

Alex smiles sheepishly, feeling slightly embarrassed that she was caught zoning out like that. Kara’s suggestion to travel back to Midvale for the anniversary must’ve gotten to her more than she thought. “It just reminded me of when I was younger,” she explains, rubbing at the back of her neck. “When my dad would come home and we’d all have breakfast together.” 

Lena nods slowly, sipping carefully from her cocoa. “That sounds nice. I’m assuming your mother is a better cook than you are?” 

“Okay, hey,” Alex laughs, pointing a fork accusingly at her, “Totally uncalled for.” 

Lena just hums, glancing to the side. “Hm, I don’t believe it was,” she murmurs into her drink. 

“Well, at least I try to cook my own food. You probably just have people to do that stuff for you,” Alex fires back, ruthless, grinning as lena reels back in offense. 

“I’ll have you know I don’t hire anyone to do work for me,” she snaps, but the look in her eyes gives her away, and she taps her fingers on the table as she shrugs. “Except for driving, of course.” 

Alex rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. You’re telling me that  _ you _ , a billionaire CEO who doesn’t even know how much a  _ banana  _ costs, don’t have people doing chores around the house for you?” 

Lena shakes her head. “No, of course not. I have a driver for safety reasons. Other than that, I… quite like doing chores myself. I like to clean. I like to cook my own meals occasionally. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a spoiled brat, Alex.” 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Alex teases affectionately, but she can’t help but be genuinely surprised; even after knowing Lena this long by now, the things she learns about the other woman are endless. 

“You can tease me all you want,” Lena huffs, “But don’t come running to me when you want a nice, home-cooked meal instead of leftover chinese take-out.”

And this is what Alex loves about Lena — the way they can just bicker with each other so easily, without even a thought. She hasn’t had many friendships like that. With Kara, there’s a fine line between friendly bickering and sibling rivalry, and with Maggie, it had pretty much always been arguing. Even with Lucy and Vasquez, it wasn’t as  _ effortless  _ as this. 

Everything is so normal between them, even after last night. She can’t possibly fuck this up by talking about what the kiss between them meant, can she? 

But— what if it could turn into something more? 

Kara had suggested she do it over dinner, but Alex is practically burning to say something now, right this moment, because she knows that if she doesn’t bring it up as soon as possible, she never will. She shifts in her seat, biting down on her bottom lip so hard it might bleed. There’s a sudden rush of adrenaline coursing through her, like a fight-or-flight response, and she feels like she has to choose between taking a leap or running away. 

But she always has been a risk taker, hasn’t she? It’s in her blood, practically embedded in the structure of her DNA. 

“Lena,” she starts, forcing herself to look Lena in the eyes. “We need to talk about last night.” 

If there’s any possibility that Lena’s reacting to her words, she doesn’t show it externally. Her face remains blank, eyes unblinking, not even a twitch of her eyebrow to give Alex any sense of what she’s thinking — until she takes a long sip of her cocoa and leans back, lips pursed. 

“It doesn’t have to change anything,” she says slowly, a drawl almost, eyes so intense that Alex has to glance away. “This— it wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a sleeping arrangement. We can keep it that way going forward if you’d like.” 

Alex’s eyebrows furrow.  _ Would _ she like that? Would she rather agree to this than going through the complicated process of figuring out just what they are to each other, how they fit together in each other’s lives in a way that’s more than friends? 

“No.” 

Lena’s stares at her. “No?” 

“No,” Alex shakes her head, face scrunching up. “No, I don’t— I don’t think I want that.” And then, a bold admission that comes out of her, “I really like kissing you.” 

The laugh Lena lets out is somehow both flattered and cocky. “Is that so?” she teases, before a soft look overtakes her face, a small smile forming. “Well, it just so happens that I like kissing you too.” 

Oh. Okay. Okay, so this is good— there’s no sting of rejection this time, like she felt with Maggie, like she’d been expecting, because Lena is accepting this with open arms. 

“You do?” she asks, lips pursed to the side, head tilted in uncertainty even though she knows Lena’s answer. 

“Yes,” Lena nods. “And, truthfully, I don’t want to stop either.” 

Alex breathes a sigh of relief, just before the doubt and uncertainty returns again, full-force. “But— so what does this mean? Are we together? Are we just… friends who kiss? I mean, friends do that, right?” 

Lena laughs again, a lighthearted sound that makes Alex smile. “Sometimes. Is that what you want to be? Friends who kiss?” 

This is the question that makes her hesitate. If she’s being honest, she hasn’t really let herself think this far into it. She’d been expecting to be rejected as soon as she brought up the prospect of anything other than ignoring the kiss and moving on, like last time. 

She hadn’t really anticipated Lena going along with it. 

“I—“ 

“It can remain nondescript for now,” Lena assures her, a warm hand settling over hers across the table. “We can take it day-by-day, see where things go?” 

Alex nods slowly, considering this. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. We can do that.” 

The smile Lena flashes her alone almost makes her dizzy with feelings she never truly acknowledged until recently. “Okay. Good.” 

They eat the rest of their breakfast mostly in silence after that, but a comfortable one. One that isn’t pressuring them to shout out random topics of conversation to follow the one that just occurred, and Alex enjoys it as she finishes up the last couple sips of her cocoa. 

“We should get going,” Lena pipes up as she stares down at her phone, rising from her seat. “My pilot’s ready to leave for National City when we are.” 

“ _ Your _ pilot,” Alex echoes, rolling her eyes. She feels a lot lighter now that she’s gotten the whole thing off her chest, gotten the conversation done and over with, enough to turn back to teasing, “Right. But you’re not spoiled.” 

“No, keep going,” Lena warns her, “I’ll make sure he leaves without you.”

* * *

The pilot doesn’t leave without her.

She’s seated in one of the soft leather chairs in Lena’s private jet, her bag at her feet and a glass of coke in the cupholder beside her, and she’s trying hard to breathe normally through take off.

God, she’s an idiot. Even flying back and forth between the states and wherever she was deployed, she’d  _ always  _ make sure to bring a Valium with her to calm her down, or something to at least get her sleeping before take off. The flight  _ to _ Gotham hadn’t been nearly as bad, with the still-lingering exhaustion of her bronchitis putting her to sleep without aid, but she’d forgotten about the trip back. 

And now she’s fucked. Monumentally fucked, because she’s a goddamn _ idiot.  _

“What’s the matter with you?” Lena asks, not unkindly but not gentle, either. More blunt than anything. 

“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” she tries to brush it off, tries to portray to Lena that she’d rather not explain, but Lena’s having none of it. 

“Bullshit. You’re acting like you’re about to die.” 

She squeezes her eyes shut. That was the worst possible thing Lena could’ve said. Quietly, she admits, “I― I’m afraid of flying.”

When she cracks an eye open at the long stretch of silence that follows, Lena’s just staring at her, and it makes her face burn. She doesn’t like telling people, and she hadn’t thought she’d have to admit to Lena one of her greatest fears. 

“Oh. Do you― I can give you something for the anxiety?” 

And, God, as tempting as that sounds, Alex shakes her head, clutching at the armrests and exhaling slowly. She can do this without pills, right? “No, no, it’s okay. Really, I just… can’t look out the window.” 

“Here,” Lena leans over, across Alex’s lap to pull the blinds shut, and then she circles the cabin, closing the rest. It helps somewhat, but the knowledge that they’re in the air is still there, and Alex has to divert her attention to something else before she has a full-blown panic attack.

“Alex, I’m serious. If you need something, you can tell me.” 

“I can do this,” Alex insists, blowing out a harsh breath. Shit, where did this sudden burst of stubbornness  _ come  _ from? “Just, distract me?” 

Lena purses her lips. “Okay, well. I could put a movie on. The jet has inflight wifi, so we could find something you like.” 

“That sounds good,” Alex answers slowly, and then watches silently as Lena stalks across the cabin to grab her laptop, setting it up on the pull-out table in front of them as Alex tries to regulate her breathing again. 

“Any specific―”

Alex is already typing in a movie title before Lena finishes her sentence. It’s only when she sits back that she realizes how childish it might seem, mostly because of Lena’s reaction. " _ The Lion King  _ is one of your favorite movies?" she asks doubtfully, as Alex hits the play button. “Seriously?”

Alex frowns, crossing her arms in mock annoyance. "What's wrong with it?” 

Lena’s dubious look deepens. “I guess I just assumed you only ever watched movies with more fight scenes than actual plot.” 

“Are you kidding? Lena, there’s some  _ intense  _ fight scenes in this,” Alex defends with a teasing smile. Then, more seriously, “I used to watch it a lot when I was a kid.” 

She can feel Lena’s eyes on her, a lot more intense than they were just a moment ago. “Besides,” she shrugs, “It’s a classic.”

It’s a bittersweet moment as the opening credits roll through, the theme song booming through the speakers. It reminds her of the nights she’d be cuddled up with her dad under a blanket, watching all three movies in a row while eating pizza and popcorn. Right now, though, her thoughts of her dad shift into something else. Right now, all she can focus on is the way Lena shifts even closer to her as the movie starts, her hand reaching down to play idly with Alex’s hair.

She can smell her lavender and honey scented conditioner, the odd blend of cigarette smoke and perfume. With her head like this, she can hear the beat of Lena’s heart, the slow and steady rhythm of it― a stark contrast to her own, which is violently pounding between her lungs.

Lena shifts then, their thighs pressing together, and suddenly Alex is acutely aware of the soft warmth that she radiates, the way being near her is, to be more cliche than Alex likes, _ intoxicating.  _ It seeps into her bones, filling the cracks and crevices inside her, and it’s so overwhelming that it makes it hard to breathe for reasons other than her fear of flying. Somehow, Lena is both entirely too much and yet not enough, and Alex is still trying to figure out how that could be.

It’s not exactly the distraction she’d expected, but she can’t say she minds, really.

“Stop staring at me.” 

Alex startles. “What?” she coughs, cheeks heating up. “I’m not.” 

“Yes, you are,” Lena argues matter-of-factly. “I can see it in the reflection of the screen.”

Oh, great. The jet might as well crash and burn this very instant, with the way Alex wants to die of embarrassment at being caught. “It’s hard not to,” she finally says— blurts, more like. “Stare, I mean.” 

If she were to look closely enough, she’s sure she would be able to see Lena blushing. But Lena’s an expert at refraining from things like that to hide what she’s thinking. “Stop it,” she says simply, brushing off Alex’s compliment with a dismissive wave of her hand. Then, textbook deflection, “You’re the one who wanted to watch this movie.” 

Alex clears her throat. “Right, sorry.” 

A moment later though, Lena’s hand finds its way into Alex’s, fingers interlacing. 

They don’t move the rest of the flight. 

* * *

Things aren’t much different, after that, but Alex can’t help but attribute the lack of awkwardness on her part to the fact that she’s been working more since they got back from Gotham, taking more night shifts and working overtime when she doesn’t necessarily need to. For the next couple days, she throws herself into her job, focusing more on that than anything else, and she knows exactly why. 

Her dad. 

The anniversary of his death is coming faster than she’d like, and she has no way out of the trip to Midvale with Kara. It’s stressing her out more than it should, really, but just the thought of spending a whole weekend in her childhood home, unable to escape the brutal reality that it’s been fifteen years since he’s been gone, makes her want to pull her hair out. She just wants to stop  _ thinking  _ about it.

Kara, however, seems to feel the opposite. All she wants to do is plan, plan,  _ plan.  _ “I was thinking we could have a memorial for him, with some people he worked with and―”

“Yeah, that sounds great, Kara,” Alex hurries to shut her up, eager to get off the phone. “Listen, can I call you back later? My break is almost over.” 

“You’re still working?” Kara asks, exasperated. “Alex, you have to take one day off, at least.” 

“Yeah, yeah, maybe,” she brushes it off. “Bye. Love you.” 

It’s not that she hates spending time with Kara and Eliza. It’s just that she’d rather spend that particular weekend drinking herself into oblivion.  _ Alone.  _ Without Kara’s exhausting optimism and Eliza’s constant nagging.

So she focuses all her attention on work, and it isn’t until five days after she gets back from Gotham that she’s even able to talk to Kara about everything that happened with Lena, the  _ other  _ thing that’s constantly been on her mind the past week. If she has to choose one thing to talk to Kara about, it’s this, so she brings it up before her sister can plan more of the trip to Midvale with her.

“So, I talked to her,” she admits as soon as Kara opens the door to her apartment one night after she gets off from work. “I talked to Lena.” 

There's a squeal in her ear, and Kara nearly knocks her over with the force of her excited hug before Alex can even get through the door. “Really? What’d she say? Did she tell you she likes you back? Oh my God, are you guys dating now?” 

Alex reels back from the sudden ambush of questions and blinks a couple times. “Kara—“ 

“And she’s already met Eliza, so she won’t have to go through the awkward meeting-the-parents phase!” Kara continues without pause, undeterred by Alex’s glare. “Plus, Eliza loves her. She told me. This will be the first time you’re dating someone Eliza approves of!” 

“Kara, stop,” Alex warns, pushing past her sister and stalking into the kitchen, where a box of donuts that Kara must’ve bought for them sit. She grabs one and takes a bite, then another. “We’re not dating.” 

“What?” Kara stops her rambling in its tracks. “But you said—“ 

“I said we  _ talked _ ,” Alex corrects her, “Nothing else. You just assumed.” 

At that, Kara deflates like a balloon, a crease between her brows. “Oh,” she sighs. “So… she rejected you? Are you okay?” 

“She didn’t reject me, either.” She takes another bite of the donut; fuck, she’s stress eating again. Why is she stress eating? “It’s— weird.” 

“Everything about your relationship with Lena is weird,” Kara points out, which, okay, she has a point. They didn’t exactly become friends in the typical way. “I’m sure whatever it is, it’s considered  _ normal _ for you guys.” 

Alex shrugs. “Well,” she starts slowly, “We agreed that we both like kissing each other a lot,” she mutters awkwardly, the back of her neck growing hot as she explains this to her sister, of all people. Kara doesn’t seem to mind though, listening intently. “And that we should keep doing it. But it’s not going to be a  _ thing _ .” 

“Not a thing?” 

“Nondescript,” Alex explains, gesturing uselessly. “At least, that’s what Lena called it.” 

Kara nods slowly, but Alex can tell she doesn’t fully understand. “Right. So, is this part of the weird sleeping thing? Or—”

Alex shakes her head furiously, crossing her arms over her chest as though it’ll protect her from the awkwardness she’s feeling about this conversation. “No, no, this is— this is different than that.” She doesn’t know  _ how _ , considering both times they’ve kissed, it seemed to be out of seeking comfort from each other in a way. 

Kara hums, adjusting her glasses on her nose. Then, it’s like a lightbulb goes off above her sister’s head, because her whole face brightens as she exclaims, “You should invite her to game night on Friday! Winn is back in town, so you two can both meet him!” 

Since returning to National City  _ months  _ ago, Alex has only attended Kara’s weekly game night twice, and of those two times, she has only been able to handle being around Kara’s…  _ diverse _ group of friends all night after getting a few drinks in. Even for a wounded, traumatized marine, there’s only so much shouting and throwing of  _ Candyland _ pieces Alex can take before she breaks. 

So… why  _ wouldn’t _ she want to subject Lena to the wonders of game night? 

“Yeah, I mean, I’ll ask her,” she gives in with a shrug, rolling her eyes at the way Kara claps her hands in excitement. “But please,  _ please _ don’t pester her. Things just got less awkward between us, and I don’t need you ruining it by being my nosy little sister.” 

Kara gasps, a hand flying to her chest in mock offense. “Nosy?” 

“Yes. You ask questions.” 

“What’s wrong with asking questions?” 

“Nothing,” Alex answers. “But there’s something wrong with asking someone I’d been dating for two weeks what color scheme they want for their wedding.” 

Kara blushes at that, her mouth snapping shut immediately, her defenses knocked down. “Maggie didn’t mind,” she mutters weakly, but doesn’t argue further when Alex glares at her. 

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to do that with Lena,” she warns, shoving a finger in Kara’s face accusingly. “You are not going to make things awkward.” 

“Okay!” Kara holds her hands up in surrender. “I promise I won’t.” 

Alex breathes a sigh of relief. “Good.” 

“So what color scheme do you think Lena wants for  _ her _ wedding?” 

_ “Kara!”  _

* * *

“How about this?” 

Alex groans, rubbing her eyes so hard an explosion of color bursts behind her lids. There’s the clacking of heels against the floor and Lena’s worried sighs, and then, a pillow against her face. “Pay attention. I’m serious.” 

Sitting up on her elbows, Alex raises an eyebrow. “It’s game night, Lena, not an L-Corp gala. You don’t have to dress up, sweatpants and a sweater are fine.” 

Lena reels back. “I’m meeting your friends,” she snaps. “Of course I’m dressing up.” 

“You don’t have to,” Alex repeats, but doesn’t argue further as Lena rushes back into a walk-in closet bigger than Alex’s entire bedroom. “You know you‘d look amazing even in a trash bag, right?” 

This time, when Lena comes out, it’s in a loose navy blouse and black pants, still dressy, but far more casual than anything else she’d picked out before. “I’d  _ never _ wear a trash bag,” she huffs, blatantly ignoring the obvious sarcasm in Alex’s words, “How’s this?”

“Looks great,” Alex rolls her eyes, “I hope it was worth being an hour late to Kara’s.” 

In the end, they’re only thirty minutes late, but for Kara, thirty minutes means they must’ve died in a fiery car wreck on the way there. By the time Alex pulls up to the apartment complex on her bike, with Lena clinging onto her jacket so tightly she’s wrinkling the leather, she has five missed calls from her sister and various texts from her sister’s friends asking where they are. 

“Apparently we missed an intense game of Twister,” Alex reads aloud from her phone as they make their way to Kara’s floor, glancing up at Lena. “I hope you’re happy with yourself, Luthor.” 

Lena rolls her eyes, nudging her with her elbow. “Oh, no,” she deadpans. “I don’t know how we’ll ever move on.” 

Alex has barely raised her fist to knock on the door before Kara’s wrenching it open, bright and bubbly as always, but this time, with just a tiny hint of annoyance. “ _ Finally!”  _ she exclaims, dragging both Alex and Lena inside. “Now we can start charades!”

The living room is full of the friends Alex has already met before — she’d known James, and has had a few nice conversations with Nia and “Brainy,” as they call him. Another man, dark haired and hovering over by the kitchen table, watches the approach, letting them get close enough before he thrusts his hand out. 

“Hey there! Winn Schott,” he introduces himself, smiling awkwardly. “You must be Alex?” 

“That I am,” she confirms with a polite smile. She takes his hand, and it only takes three full seconds to realize her mistake before Winn is practically gawking at the prosthetic, eyes wide. He’s almost  _ drooling,  _ and Alex shifts uncomfortably under his gaze. 

“Whoa,” he breathes out, head whipping up to look at her, then back down to her arm. He traces his fingertips over the metal. “This is  _ advanced _ . What blend of metal is this? Is this myoelectric-controlled?” 

Alex blinks, taken aback by his forwardness, eyes locked on the hand touching her wrist. “Uh— It’s titanium alloy,” she says, and then frowns. “Please stop touching it.” 

Winn clears his throat, face redder than Alex’s own. “I’m sorry! I just— I got excited. It’s  _ really _ cool,” he gushes. “I didn’t mean to—“

“Winn is into building things,” Kara interjects, quickly stepping in and gently removing Winn’s hand from her arm. “And he seems to have forgotten boundaries, too,” she adds, giving him a look. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats sheepishly. 

“It’s fine,” Alex assures him, holding up a hand to stop him from apologizing further. “Really.” 

And it  _ is _ fine; she gets that someone like Winn would be interested in her prosthetic. Even she herself was at first, the part of her that studied bioengineering in her free time practically ogling just like he did, before getting so used to it that it no longer feels like something new and different. Still, the invasiveness fills her with discomfort, something that Kara and Lena are both quick to recognize. 

There're a few moments of awkward silence, in which Alex shuffled back, closer to Lena, and the other woman lays a hand on her forearm, silently soothing her. Then, Kara brightens up once more, clapping her hands and looking towards Lena. “Charades! Let’s go!” 

She’s on Kara’s team first, naturally. They breeze through each phrase with ease, winning the first two rounds before James pipes up from the couch, the group groaning collectively as they high five. “Okay, guys, this is unfair. Let’s switch teams.” 

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Alex teases, sharing a grin with her sister. 

“Yeah, it’s not our fault we’re amazing,” Kara defends, hands in the air. Glancing at Alex, she shrugs then. “I guess we could switch partners by now, though.” 

Alex blinks. In the entirety of them being sisters, this is the first time Kara has ever willingly suggested not partnering up and working together on something. Then Alex recognizes the glint in her eye and realizes immediately what her game is. “You could partner with Lena,” she continues, smiling innocently. “I’ll partner with Winn. Right, Winn?”

“Right-o!” Winn agrees happily.

Alex doesn’t even get a say in this. Not that she’s against playing with Lena, per say, but giving into her sister’s shenanigans is something she does  _ not  _ like doing. Still, she smiles at Lena when the other woman slides up beside her, nudging her in the side. 

“Let’s do this,” she winks, taking a seat as Nia and Brainy start the next round.

Playing charades with Lena as her partner is a whole different experience, Alex learns quickly. As competitive as Kara is, Lena is ten times so, and it shows in the way she scrunches her face up as Alex mimes out the phrase, looking even more concentrated than she does at work.

It’s, quite frankly, fucking attractive. Alex has no idea how, but the way Lena stares at her intensely, tongue sticking through her teeth as she thinks, makes her want to kiss her right then and there. 

_ Come on, you know this,  _ she says with her eyes, staring into Lena’s concentrated green ones as she mimes out a scene from a movie they’d watched just two weeks prior. Lena’s eyebrow twitches, and she snaps her fingers, jumping up and down as it comes to her. 

“Lord of the Rings!” she calls out, and Alex cheers, pausing her miming act to crush her in a victory hug.

_ “What?”  _ James groans, just as Nia and Brainy fall back against the couch cushions, both looking defeated. Kara and Winn sigh at their own loss, sharing a look between each other. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

“We just know each other too well,” Lena shrugs, grinning as she picks up her drink and takes a long sip, as if that’s her way of congratulating herself. Alex laughs, falling against her and grabbing her own drink.

“We make a good team, don’t we?” Lena tells her softly later, once they’re settled back on the couch and Kara’s already begun setting up their next game. Her breath is warm against Alex’s ear, making her shiver, and she taps her glass against Alex’s with a smile. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, shuffling closer. “We do.”

Throughout the rest of the night, Alex watches Lena carefully, observing the way she gets on with Kara’s friends. She’s talking to Winn now as the others play some card game, sipping idly from her third drink of the night as Winn rambles on about something, smiling and nodding.

Then she catches Alex’s eye across the room and winks. 

“She’s different from Maggie.”

Alex nearly jumps at the sudden intrusion of her sister in her personal space, an arm slung around her shoulders. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kara doesn’t look at her, choosing instead to watch Lena just as she was a moment ago, eyes narrowed in thought behind her glasses. “You guys just seem so… in sync. Like you understand each other.” 

Alex chuckles awkwardly. “I mean, yeah, Kara. We’ve been friends for months now.” Well— they’re not exactly ‘friends’ anymore, are they? Alex doesn’t know what to call them. They’re not officially together, but it’s clear to both of them that they’re _more._

But Kara shakes her head. “You and Maggie were  _ engaged _ , and it wasn’t like this, Alex,” she points out.

Thinking back, Alex can see why she says that. Even if the engagement was more out of convenience than anything else, they were friends first and got on fine, but even then, there always seemed to be an invisible wall between them. They never could truly see each other, understand each other the way she and Lena do. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. Then, quickly, in a hushed whisper, “ _ But  _ don’t start getting all excited. It’s not official yet, and I don’t want Lena to feel—”

“Yet?” Kara quietly squeals, but Alex shoots her a pointed glare. 

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she hisses, pointing a finger accusingly. “You’re not going to do that. It’s not a big deal, Kara, seriously.” 

But her sister only shrugs, looking like she can barely contain her excitement through her wide grin. “Right. Not official, got it,” she assures her, nodding furiously. “I won’t say anything to her, I promise.” 

Alex breathes out a sigh. “Okay. Good.” 

But Kara’s not done talking about this, unfortunately. She grabs Alex’s wrist when she tries to leave for the living room, stopping her. “You really like her, don’t you?” she asks, but by the look on her face, it seems she already knows the answer.

Alex bites down on her bottom lip. “Yeah,” she admits with a shrug, “Yeah, I really do.”

Kara smiles, pulling her closer, into a gentle hug. “Come on,” she says once they pull apart, leading Alex back to the living room. “It’s time for Monopoly!” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter took so long, its been a busy existence boys

why does _t r a g e d y_ exist?

**because you are full of rage.**

why are you full of rage?

**because you are full of grief.**

— _grief lessons: four plays by euripides,_

anna carson [translator]

* * *

“Straighten your shoulders, sweetheart,” her mother tells her, and she stands behind Alex’s chair and fixes the strap of her dress. She rests her hands for a second on Alex’s shoulders, like she used to, and then breathes out deeply.

“Dad’s dead, and you’re worried about my posture,” she grumbles as Eliza takes a seat next to her. Her grandmother sends her a disapproving glance from across the aisle, and Alex just barely refrains from rolling her eyes. 

She feels something like pressure, but scattered; weak flickers of something cold. In front of her, the American flag sits folded neatly atop her father’s casket, and she can’t help but fidget in her chair. 

Her father used to squeeze her hand three times.

 _It means ‘I love you’_ he told her one night, when she finally asked about it. _Three times for three words. See?_ And he squeezed it again, one two three, his big hand clasped in hers. It became their thing after that, saying _I love you_ that way, something that only they did with each other.

The warmth of his palm does not comfort her now. Her hands sit cold and trembling in her lap as six soldiers hand her mother the flag, clasped so tightly together her knuckles turn white. 

_“Please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for Jeremiah Danvers’ honorable and faithful service—“_

The long, incessant beep of her answering machine breaks through the fog of remembrance, and Kara’s voice filters through the speakers a moment later, frustrated but determined. “I _know_ you’re ignoring my calls, Alex,” she accuses, and Alex huffs out a laugh into her pillow. “Whether you answer them or not, I’m still picking you up in twenty minutes.” 

She lets out a groan at the reminder. Fuck, she’d forgotten that Kara had planned to get on the road this early. “So we can get to Midvale by noon,” she’d explained when Alex had complained about it. 

_“_ The entire reason I wanted to leave this afternoon was so we’d spend _less_ time there, Kara,” she’d argued back, only half-heartedly, knowing her sister well enough to know there was no point in changing her mind. 

A voice, low and raspy with sleep, pipes up beside her. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here with me?” 

Alex rolls over, taking in the sight of Lena with messy hair, the light from the window angled perfectly on her face, making her look almost glowing. She reaches over and snakes an arm around Alex’s waist, pulling her closer, and Alex breathes in deeply at the warmth Lena’s body exudes. 

“You have no idea how much I’d prefer that,” she murmurs, leaning over to brush her lips against Lena’s, reveling in the way Lena presses forward, deepening it. Only for a moment though, before she’s pulling away and flashing a borderline-dopey smile in Lena’s direction. She’s still getting used to this change between them, but it’s a nice change for once. A very, _very_ nice change. 

It’s weird— she’s gone almost three decades without knowing Lena, but Alex can’t imagine a life without her now. 

“It’s just a weekend,” she assures her. “A miserable, depressing weekend.” 

Lena rolls her eyes. “You’re being dramatic. I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

Alex cocks an eyebrow, scoffing as she shifts away from Lena to look at her better. “No, it’s going to be horrible. A whole weekend with my mother, surrounded by reminders of my father’s death? I’d rather be back in Iraq.” 

“Don’t say that,” Lena admonishes, and Alex looks at her sheepishly. “If things get too overwhelming, call me. Don’t suffer through it alone like you’re going to want to.”

God, since when did Lena know her so well? “Yeah, yeah,” she brushes it off, but Lena maintains serious eye contact, a dark eyebrow lifting. “Okay, I promise,” she gives in, shrinking under intense green eyes. “I hate when you do that.” 

“Do what?” Lena asks, batting her eyelashes innocently. 

“You know what,” Alex snaps, ignoring the way Lena pouts dramatically at her tone of voice. Before she can say anything else though, the alarm on her watch goes off, beeping incessantly and completely abolishing the light-heartedness between them. “Fuck, I have to go soon.”

Lena’s pout only increases in it’s dramatics, but Alex doesn’t even have the energy to roll her eyes at the other woman as she climbs out of bed, quickly slipping out of her pajamas and into a shirt that might’ve actually been Lena’s at one point. “Are you going to be okay without me for the night?”

Lena just huffs at her. “I suppose so,” she relents, but her faux-attitude is discarded as soon as Alex leans down, pecking her on the lips again just because she can’t help herself.

“Have a safe drive!” Lena calls out to her as she grabs her bags at the front door. “Call me tonight?” 

“Of course,” Alex assures her, and then smirks teasingly. “Try not to spend all your time here while I’m gone.” 

The last thing she hears from Lena before she shuts the apartment door is, “Too late!” 

* * *

Midvale is all sandy beaches and foaming tides, nightclubs and pubs crowded with tourists, live music filtering through the streets. Alex takes in her surroundings as Kara drives, weaving easily through familiar back streets that they’d ventured onto as teenagers, eyes catching on everywhere she’d frequented in her childhood.

“Weird being back, huh?” Kara observes as she turns into their old neighborhood. Almost instantly, Alex’s blood pressure seems to spike as they near the house, but she breathes in deeply through her nose and focuses on Kara’s question.

“Yeah, it is,” she agrees, shutting her eyes as the warm coastal breeze rushes through her hair. “It’s… different.” 

Kara nods. “It’s become a lot more touristy since you were last here,” she explains as they pull up to the house. It still looks the same, save for a whole new flower bed leading up to the porch that Eliza must’ve planted recently, a cheerful array of red and yellow flowers sprouting from dark mulch.

“Since when did Mom start gardening?” 

Kara glances at her from the corner of her eye. “When you were in the hospital,” she explains quietly, following Alex up to the front door. “It was the only thing she could do to keep her mind off everything.” 

Well, that makes the flowers slightly less cheerful. “Oh.” 

Kara smiles softly, pulling her along the rest of the way, seeming regretful for bringing that time in her recovery up. “Come on, Eliza said she already started dinner.” 

That’s the only thing that helps to lift Alex’s spirits just a bit. Her mother always did have the best cooking, and it’s a wonder how she’d managed to stay fit enough for active duty with the amount of times Eliza had practically force-fed her during her occasional visits, fretting about how thin Alex looked and _are they feeding you enough out there, sweetie?_

As soon as they walk in, the aroma of chicken and roasted vegetables surrounds them, and Alex breathes in deeply as she enters the kitchen to see Eliza bustling around, an apron tied around her waist. “Oh, good, you made it!” she exclaims when they walk in, arms outstretched for a hug. “Hello, girls.” 

“Hey,” Alex sighs, letting Eliza embrace her tightly. “That smells good.” 

“It’s your father’s favorite,” she explains despondently. Alex can smell hints of garlic and rosemary, and the sweet, floral scent of tea brewing. “Roasted chicken, carrots and asparagus, and potatoes. I just thought I would cook it tonight.” 

Alex nods slowly. She remembers her father’s gleeful face every time Eliza would make this meal for dinner, how he’d happily tuck his napkin into his collar and gaze, almost _lovingly_ , as her mother set the steaming plate in front of him. “He would’ve loved it, Mom.” 

“Thank you, dear. Kara, can you help your sister set the table?” 

It’s the quietest and most peaceful setting of the table that they’ve done in their entire lives, as they do what Eliza asks without complaint. She looks at Kara from across the table and makes a face, holding three fingers up and counting down each second that passes, both of them expecting— 

“Were my daughters replaced with look-alikes in National City? This is a new development.” 

And there it is. 

Alex rolls her eyes. “We’re not kids anymore,” she defends, Kara nodding beside her, “We’re not going to fight over who sets the table.” 

“Yeah!” Kara agrees with a huff. “We’re civilized adults.”

They share a look and smile, and it’s often the small moments like these that Alex misses between them. They’d been so close before, especially during their teen years once Alex had grown finally out of her angst-ridden, angry self and accepted the fact that Kara was her sister. Since coming back, it’s changed. It’s different somehow. 

“Go put your things away,” Eliza suggests, practically pushing them upstairs. “Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes.” 

Their bedroom still looks the same as it did three decades ago. They’ve always made an odd pair, she’ll admit, as she drops her overnight bag onto her bed and sits down. 

It’s never been lost on Alex how _different_ their respective sides of the bedroom look. The stark contrast between Kara, all doe-eyed and innocent, and the classic rock band posters on Alex’s side of the wall, the old record player on her desk, and the decorative skulls on her shelves is almost comical. Her sister clashes with Alex’s dark teenage personality, her own side filled to the brim with stuffed animals and colorful tapestry and fairy lights hanging above her bed. 

Being back reminds her of nights she’d be sitting on her bed, headphones in and music blasting. She remembers sneaking out of this very bedroom every so often, climbing out the window to go night surfing with friends. 

It also brings her back to being in junior high with a brand new sister, her first and only priority from that point on; Kara had always been her responsibility, a rope tying her completely to her sister until Alex finally graduated. 

But graduation had only stretched the rope out. Enlisting had snapped it apart completely. 

While taking care of Kara had chipped away at her individual identity over time, the military stripped her of it until she didn’t know who she was outside of the marines. Being a _person_ instead of a _soldier_ was not an option anymore. In active duty, the rope that once tied her to Kara felt as thin and frayed as a shoelace. 

“Weird, huh?” Kara muses aloud as she sets her own things down, breaking Alex out of her thoughts. “It’s like we’re kids again.” 

Alex laughs lightly with a nod. It’s like Kara’s always been able to read her mind when they’re together. “Yeah, it is,” she agrees as she makes her way to the bathroom to put her things down and wash up for dinner.

By the time she comes out, Kara’s standing by her bed, staring intently — almost wistfully, Alex thinks — at the picture of the two of them Eliza had taken a week before Alex had enlisted, tacked up above her headboard. It’s completely candid, one of those shots you’d find in a picture frame for a display in a craft store. Frozen in the moment, Kara’s leaning in to whisper something in Alex’s ear. She’s laughing or smiling or doing something that involves lighting up her entire face, and they both look—

—well, they look _happy._

Kara’s voice breaks the silence. “I miss you, you know.” 

When Alex glances at her, Kara is looking over at her now, blue eyes sadder than they were a moment ago. “What do you mean? I’m right here.” 

Kara shakes her head. “But you’re _not_ though, are you?” she explains, and with the way she says it, it seems to fill Alex with her own sense of longing. Like they’re connected somehow, and she’s able to feel her sister’s emotions like they’re her own. 

“Yeah.” It comes out as a heavy exhale, more like a sigh than anything else. “It’s like, even though I’ve come back, I haven’t really… _come back_.”

Kara looks down, fiddling with the edge of her blanket. “Well, I wish you would,” she admits quietly. 

Alex nods. The feeling of longing is weighing heavy in her heart now, and she aches to get back to where she was before. “Yeah. Me too, Kara.” 

Two arms wrap around her, and Alex melts into the hug that Kara embraces her with, trying not to think about it too hard. “Come on, Mom’s probably waiting on us,” she murmurs into her sister’s hair, pulling away to tug her out the door. 

They don’t even have enough time to get settled at the table. Eliza sighs, rubs at her forehead, and immediately, Alex knows the next words that are going to come out of her mouth: “Alex, sweetie, could you run to the store for me?” 

Of course. Being back home would be nothing without a routine trip to the grocery store on account of Eliza’s forgetfulness. “I’ll make a list,” she continues, without waiting for an answer. “It needs to be quick.” 

Alex rolls her eyes, but complies nonetheless, snatching the piece of paper from Eliza’s fingers and stuffing it in her pocket, crumbled up and sad. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be back in ten minutes.” 

Then comes what would follow every time, as Kara pouts and snaps her head over to Eliza with her familiar, obnoxious puppy dog eyes. “Can I go?” she asks, right on schedule, and Alex smiles at the insistence in her voice. 

“No, dear,” Eliza says, just as she always does, “You need to stay and help me with dinner.”

Alex is already out the door before she’s able to hear Kara’s downright pitiful whine, swinging a leg over her bike and rolling her eyes at the sight of Kara, a dark silhouette through the gap in the curtain, reluctantly dragging behind Eliza into the kitchen. 

The ride to the grocery store is shorter than she’s used to, before she realizes it’s because she’s on her bike. Before, she would have to brave the horrible California heat and _walk_ the mile there and back, heavy grocery bags in hand, herself. Now that she thinks back on it, she can’t believe Kara actually _wanted_ to make the trek. 

The grocery store hasn’t changed much, still the rundown, small thing that only a very minuscule amount of locals actually went to. The door creaks when she steps through, the employees hardly lifting their heads at her presence as she grabs a cart and strolls through the aisles.

“Alex?” A voice calls out, startling her slightly. Fuck, she was hoping she wouldn’t run into anybody she knew here, at least so soon. “Alex Danvers?” 

She knows that voice. She freezes in her spot, her arm floating in the air, ready to grab a bottle of spices on the shelf. A hand comes down onto her shoulder to spin her around, her eyes locking into dark hair and pale blue eyes. “It’s Vicky! Oh my God!” 

_Yeah,_ Alex thinks. _Oh my God is right._

Seeing Vicky Donahue for the first time in two decades nearly sends her face-first into the floor. While she’d expected at least one familiar face from her past, her ex-best friend that made her realize she was gay was certainly _not_ the face she thought she’d see today. 

“Hey!” she starts, too loud. She nearly cringes at the sheer fakeness of her joy, but manages to stop her expression from changing. “How are you?” 

Vicky’s smile takes up half her face. She looks the exact same as she did in high school, with straight brown hair and too-big eyes. “I’m great, stranger!” she laughs, and, wow, _this_ was the kind of girl she crushed on back then? “When did you get back in town?” 

“Today, actually,” Alex says, her hands slipping inside her back pockets as she leans back slightly. “Kara and I are visiting our mom for the weekend.”

“Right, yeah,” Vicky nods along, sounding just as interested in the conversation as Alex feels. “How’s it feel to be back? It’s weird, isn’t it?” 

This is a bad idea. Alex should just duck out of the conversation as soon as she can. Maybe she can fake a phone call, as old a cliche that technique is. “It’s… different,” she shrugs, picking her words carefully. “Weirdly different. It’s not— it’s for visits, you know? I’d never move back or anything.” _Quit rambling, Danvers._ “I mean, it’s a lot better than base.”

“Oh, yeah,” she huffs out a laugh, eyes glued to the engraved dog tags clinking around Alex’s neck. “That was like, the gossip of the _century_ when you first left.” 

Alex chuckles, albeit awkwardly. Midvale is a small town, she’s not surprised her career choice sparked intrigue within the community. Everybody knew everybody, and when something happened, no matter how trivial, word got around. 

“Hey, listen,” Vicky starts, looking excited, “we should catch up. Are you free tonight?” 

Alex hesitates; the last time she saw Vicky, it was at graduation as their names were called just minutes from each other, six months after their horrible, destructive fall-out. 

_Don’t do it,_ her mind screams, but she opens her mouth and says, “Yeah, I am.”

It’s only after she makes it out the door a few minutes later, a bag of groceries in hand, that she realizes Vicky hadn’t even asked for her number. Meaning she’s going to show up at Alex’s old _house_ , most likely, just like she would when they were friends. 

_Idiot._

By the time she gets back to the house, Eliza and Kara have finished most of dinner, save for the side dish that just _needed_ thyme. Eliza sighs in relief when she walks in, snatching the bag from her hand and digging out the bottle. “Thank you, dear.” 

Alex shifts awkwardly, rubbing at the back of her neck. She feels like she’s fourteen, standing in the doorway of her parents room and trying to work up the nerve to ask her mother a question. “I might see Vicky Donahue later,” she finally blurts out, messing absently with the napkin folded atop her plate. She tries to downplay it, brush it off as no big deal. 

Kara, of course, seems to majorly disagree. She jumps up from her seat at the dining table, eyes wide and mouth agape. “What? Really?” 

Eliza hums as she carries the last dish to the table and slips her oven mitts off. “How did that happen?” she inquires, lifting an eyebrow at Alex from across the table. . 

“We ran into each other at the store. She asked if I was busy tonight.” She feels awkward, letting them know this, but she brushes the embarrassment away. “I think I might go.” 

“You should,” her mother tells her with a short nod. “Maybe it’ll be good for you. I remember how distraught you were after you two fought.” 

Alex casts a look downward, chuckling. “Yeah, well. That was decades ago.” 

“It’s always nice to get closure, sweetie,” Eliza argues gently. 

_Closure,_ Alex echoes internally, feeling an emptiness in her heart.If only it were that easy, but getting closure with Vicky Donahue is not what she longs for. 

“Yeah, right,” she agrees anyways, tacking on a fake smile. Eager to change the subject, she searches for a way to steer the conversation away. Luckily, Kara does the job for her. 

“I was thinking about going down to Jeremiah’s grave later tonight,” she announces, aimlessly playing with her mashed potatoes, her lips pursed. “I mean— we should, shouldn’t we?”

Eliza sets her fork down, lacing her fingers together. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, Kara,” she assures her, glancing at Alex from the corner of her eye, as if asking ‘ _please don’t back out_ _of this.’_ When Alex nods, just barely, she smiles softly and exclaims, “We’ll all go after dinner.” 

* * *

Alex has never thought graveyards to be as creepy at night as the majority of people do. The fog that’s settled over the fields of tombstones is almost mesmerizing to her, the dew on the grass sparkling as they walk the path towards the mausoleum, standing prominently in the center of the graveyard. 

She breathes in the warm evening air, letting it out slowly as they come to the tall white building. It’s daunting in the way it towers above them, trails of moss climbing up the pearly white stones, the cobblestone steps cracked and worn down.

“It’s a shame nobody keeps up with this anymore,” Eliza criticizes as she takes in the appearance of the old building. 

The reminder that her mom and Kara are right behind her sends something like disappointment shooting into her chest. Despite their plan of coming here as a family to remember him, Alex can’t help but feel like she needs some _alone_ time with her father, whether he’s in a casket in the wall of the mausoleum or not.

She traces her fingertips along the engravings in the granite of the tombstone, an ache in her chest, blossoming behind her ribs. 

So. It’ll never get easier, then.

* * *

JEREMIAH F. DANVERS

BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER

January 31, September 28, 

1967 ♰ 2009

* * *

She doesn’t end up seeing Vicky that night, the heaviness of visiting her dad’s grave already too much on her shoulders. As soon as she gets home, she finds herself collapsing on her childhood bed, shoving her face in the pillow and nearly blacking out with the sheer exhaustion of the day. 

Instead, Vicky shows up to her house on her second night in town, the pebbles she throws tapping against the window just enough to be annoying but not enough to break through the glass. 

“Are you still in high school?” Alex hisses as she pries the window open, glaring down at the other woman. Vicky just shrugs, tossing another pebble up that nearly catches Alex right in the eye. 

“Come on,” she calls up, ignoring the way Alex frantically waves at her to be quiet. “We’re going to the beach.” 

It’s only then that Alex notices, through the darkness of the night, the two full bottles of Smirnoff in Vicky’s hands, and another bottle that might be whiskey, tucked under her right arm. _Jesus Christ._

The walk to the beach is quieter than she expected. Vicky hums to herself as they make their way through the sand dunes, the bottles swinging at her side, kicking sand up behind her. Somewhere in the distance, Alex can hear a litany of crickets chirping their hearts out, intermingled with the croaking of frogs and the occasional bird call, all drowned out by the crashing of waves against the shore.

It’s one of the only things she misses about being in a small coastal town like Midvale. With barely any light pollution, the stars above litter the night sky like glitter, and it’s more peaceful than any moment she could have in the city. 

It takes her back to when she’d sneak out of her window on school nights to go surfing, glow sticks around her wrists and neck, the only other light being the pale glimmer of the moon above. 

“I’m surprised you came out with me tonight,” Vicky breaks the silence, as she takes a seat on one of the sand dunes and sets the bottles of alcohol down in front of her. “I was expecting you to give some bullshit excuse and ignore me the rest of your trip.” 

Alex blushes, hoping Vicky can’t see it through the darkness. The ironic part is that she’d actually thought about it for a hot minute, before deciding not to be a coward like before. “Yeah, well,” she trails off with an awkward chuckle, picking at the tall blades of grass that sprout from the sand. She grabs at one of the Smirnoff bottles, unscrewing the cap and taking a long, bitter, cringe-worthy sip. “Why not, right?”

“You know,” Vicky starts, quiet and low, like she doesn’t quite want anyone else to hear despite them being the only two on the beach for miles. “I had a lot of regrets when you first left here. I’d always think I’d never see you again and never get to apologize.” 

Alex’s head shoots over to her, eyebrows furrowing. “What?” she scoffs, shaking her head. “No, Vicky, it was all— _I_ was the one who should’ve apologized. _I_ pushed _you_ away.”

“It takes two for a friendship to fall apart, Danvers,” Vicky argues, and Alex leans back against the dune, lips pursed. She shrugs, taking a sip of her own bottle and sighing. “If I’m being honest, I don’t think I slept for days after you left Midvale.” 

Alex scoffs again, but it comes out sounding more like a laugh this time. She tips the bottle over and lets the vodka burn its way down her throat, wincing at the taste on her tongue. “I don’t think I believe that,” she admits, eyes narrowing slightly. 

“I did!” Vicky insists, nodding furiously. Then, more sober, quieter, “I felt the same way, you know.” 

The words make her freeze. “What?” 

“It wasn’t all in your head,” Vicky goes on, seeming to not notice the way Alex has stopped breathing. “I liked you too.”

Alex blinks. Once, twice, her eyes burning for some reason. “Are you serious?” she asks, a huff in the air, like a heavy sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

It’s Vicky’s turn to scoff now, throwing her arms up in an exasperated gesture as she turns towards Alex, a sad smile on her face. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance, did you?” she reminds her, shrugging a shoulder. “Besides, by the time I even realized it, you were gone. In the _military_.” 

Alex presses her tongue against her teeth, fingers tightening around the neck of the bottle in her hand. “Guess that’s a lesson learned then,” she finally notes quietly, a feeling of warmth washing over the back of her neck, something like shame pricking at her skin. Maybe it’s just reality settling in, the pang of guilt that comes with the realization that she’s _always_ had a habit of pushing away things that could’ve been great for her, if she had let it. 

Vicky’s voice pulls her out of her thoughts, seeming to be eager to change the subject now, like she regrets even bringing it up. “Do you miss it? The army, I mean.” 

Alex glances at her, but her old friend is staring out into the darkness as she waits for an answer, paying her no mind. “Sometimes,” she says, because… it’s true. She came out of the marines with more grief and trauma than she’d ever have as a citizen, but she also came out with relationships she’d never regret having, despite how they ended. “I miss my unit, mostly. My _friends_.” 

“You must have some cool war stories though,” Vicky jokes, and Alex winces without meaning to, suddenly feeling the warm stickiness of blood on her hands like it was yesterday. The only “cool” stories she can think of while on duty are times she had with Lucy and Vasquez, not on the frontlines. Like one Christmas in Seoul City, when a fellow soldier had come back from visiting the states with a fake snow machine to get them all into the ‘holiday spirit.’ For several grown adults, they must’ve played in the fake snow for hours that day.

“It’s not that cool,” she finally answers Vicky, keeping it vague. “The pros are exaggerated.”

She’ll never regret joining, following in her dad’s footsteps just as she’d always dreamt of. She just wishes that her dreams didn’t have to turn into nightmares. Since being discharged, there’s always been something lurking underneath her subconscious, ready to clutch onto her and break through the surface.

There’s a brief moment of silence as Alex contemplates, when the only sounds are the chirping of crickets and the waves crashing onto the shore. Then, with a small, curious laugh, Vicky asks, “So, anyone special in your life, Danvers?” 

The question takes her off guard; Vicky looks at her and Alex feels as if all her nerves have been exposed. She thinks of emerald green eyes and a tantalizing smirk, stuttering out a pathetic, “Uh, not— I mean— yes, but—“ 

“Do you not know?” Vicky teases, and Alex feels the tips of her ears burn. She clears her throat, fiddling with the tear in her jeans. 

“It’s, uh, complicated,” she settles for saying, shrugging awkwardly. She and Lena haven’t exactly given this thing a name, but she knows it’s not as simple as just being ‘friends.’ “Her name is Lena. It’s kinda— weird, I guess, the way we started out. It was more of a mutually beneficial… therapy?” 

She feels embarrassed phrasing it like she did, but there’s no other way to describe it, really. Vicky hums in acknowledgment, silently telling her to go on, and she chuckles as she runs her hand through the buzzed part of her hair. “I don’t really know what to call it now.” 

“Is it a friends-with-benefits type deal?” Vicky asks, but Alex finds herself shaking her head despite not _completely_ disagreeing with that title. 

“No, it’s just… she’s beautiful,” she ends up blurting, her cheeks burning red as soon as the words come out of her mouth. God, she feels like a teenager talking about her first real crush. “And smart, and she has this wit about her that just—” She breaks off with a light laugh, rubbing at her neck. “It’s just complicated,” she finishes, settling for echoing her earlier words. 

“Wow. You really like her,” Vicky takes note of, looking at Alex intently. “I mean— just the way you talk about her, you know?”

The observation isn’t a stretch, Alex knows. It’s not something Vicky just assumed. It’s true; she likes Lena a lot, more than she thought she ever would. Hearing it aloud though, especially from someone who used to give her the same frightening feelings back in high school, feels suffocating. Her relationship with Lena is something she knows she can’t let herself think too long about. 

“Well, promise me that you won’t let yourself end up with the same regrets as before,” Vicky tells her, seeming to not even understand the weight of her own words. There are a million regrets that Alex stores away like fireflies in a mason jar, weighing down on her, a constant heaviness in her heart. 

It’s when the first drop of rain hits the top of her head that she jumps at the opportunity to get out of a conversation she isn’t ready for and the thoughts that might follow, already rising from her spot on the ground, brushing the sand off her jeans and glancing up at the darkened sky. 

“I think I should go,” she admits, looking down at Vicky, who stays sprawled out on the sand dune. “My mother is probably wondering where I am, anyways, and—” 

Vicky huffs out a laugh at that, a sad smile on her face. “ _Wow_ , does that sentence bring me back to junior year.”

Alex squeezes her eyes shut. It brings her back too, back to when she started avoiding Vicky out of fear of what she could be. The ‘mom excuse’ became a regular thing, after that. “I’m sorry,” she says, shrugging sheepishly. “It was good seeing you again, Vicky.” 

“You too, Alex,” Vicky responds quietly, remaining unmoving in the sand. 

She feels eyes glued to her back the whole walk back up the beach.

* * *

It’s raining heavily by the time she makes it home, coming down in big drops that soak her in a few seconds. When she reaches the porch, her clothes drip onto the concrete, tracks of mud coming from up the stone steps. She wipes a drop of water from above her eyebrow, blinking at the group of moths fluttering around the porch light; she can see her mother’s silhouette behind the curtains, sitting almost _too_ still on the couch, and Alex frowns to herself. Had her mom _actually_ been waiting up for her?

As soon as she unlocks the door, Eliza is rising from the couch and standing in the doorway of the living room, looking pale in the darkness of the house, and a bad feeling bubbles up in Alex’s chest at the look on her face. 

Shit. After her night with Vicky, she doesn’t think her already heavy heart can stand another ton of weight to carry. “Mom?” she calls out carefully, kicking her shoes off by the door. It’s only when she glances in the living room that she sees Kara sitting there too, huddled up on the love seat, looking just as confused as she feels. 

Her mother purses her lips. “Alex, sit down please. I have something I’d like to discuss with both of you.” 

Oh, no. This is the tone of voice her mother she adopts when she has bad news. Immediately, Alex’s blood runs cold in her veins. “What is it?” she asks, without sitting down. 

Eliza’s lip curls in, her eyes cast downward, like she doesn’t want to look Alex in the eye, Like she’s nervous for what her reaction may be. “This is going to be news to you two. I haven’t told anyone about it yet, as it’s still fresh, and I don’t want you girls to be—“ 

“Mom, just tell us,” Alex interrupts, and then snaps her mouth shut at the look on her mom’s face, muttering sheepishly, “Sorry.” 

Eliza inhales deeply. “I’ve been seeing someone.” 

The words hit her like a ton of bricks. She reels back, accidentally stepping back into the arm of the couch. “What?” 

“He worked with your father. We just recently reconnected, and we’ve been seeing each other for a few months now.”

Alex blinks. Eliza isn’t smiling; she’s not kidding. “Are you— what?” she repeats, her voice low, sounding distant to her own ears. “You’re telling us this now?” 

“Alex,” Kara starts, a hand on her arm, but Alex ignores her. 

“How could you? It’s the anniversary of Dad’s _death_ ,” she spits, almost hysterical, “Why would you tell us this now?” 

Eliza’s lips purse, her expression tight. “I thought, with you two here, it would be a good time to finally let you girls know.“ 

Alex isn’t hearing any of it. There’s a fog in her brain, a ringing in her ears. Her mom is _seeing_ someone? The concept is foreign to her; for her mother to be in a relationship with a man other than her father seems… weird, unnatural. Of course, Eliza is almost sixty now. It was bound to happen eventually. Alex just never thought she’d find out now, like this, on today of all days. 

Somehow, it feels like a betrayal. More than that, though, it feels like losing everything she once had all over again. 

“He treats me well,” Eliza admits this to her specifically, more than to the both of them, and Alex’s face grows hot at the implication. “He’s good to me in a way your father wasn’t in the end. I know you don’t want to hear that, but I have a right to move on."

And yes, she does. Eliza's been a widow longer than she was a wife, and Alex doesn't blame her for finally moving on. But the comment about her father, paired with the sudden, unexpected news of a new man in her mom's life, sends anger rushing up before she can quell it. “Don't talk about Dad like that,” Alex snaps, the backs of her eyes hot. She blinks away the burn, her chest tightening. 

Her mother’s expression shifts almost inexplicably, but Alex notices the change. Of course she notices. The tightly pursed lips, the furrowed brows, they’re all too familiar to her, and it fills her with so many unwelcome memories that she wants to break out of her skin and scream. "I don't understand why there must always be an argument, Alexandra—"

“He was sick!” she blurts out, the words rushing from her mouth all at once, startling even Kara in the corner. Her throat starts to close up with the urge to cry, the burn climbing up and up. She feels tired now, already drained from a fight that’s just begun. “And you _always_ said he was getting better. Well, where is he now?"

Kara's hand comes down on her arm, but Alex rips it out of her grip before the touch unravels her. Eliza’s expression is stony, but her eyes give away the emotions she’s feeling, sad and dark. “Jeremiah was a good man, Alex, and an amazing father." _But not a good husband,_ are the words Eliza doesn't say, but somehow, Alex knows it's what she's implying. "But you know how he was, after." 

_After_.After, when her dad had come home from war one day a changed man, someone she could no longer recognize. After, when she’d lay in bed and listen through the walls to glass crashing, to fists through drywall, to the slamming of doors. Always paranoid, always _angry._ Months of intensive psychotherapy and couples therapy with Eliza, therapy that didn’t start helping until just before his death. 

At least, Alex had thought. Maybe the truth should’ve been more obvious to her. 

“But your father _always_ loved you,” her mom continues, a hand coming down on her shoulder and squeezing. “I remember thinking that even as his wife, I could never compete with his love for you.” 

Alex breathes in sharply, and something in her finally cracks. She feels the tears before she even realizes she’s crying, the emotions from this weekend piling up and spilling over all at once. It’s enough to make her whole body shake, and she covers her mouth with her hands as she cries, Eliza’s arms wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her closer. It lasts long enough for her throat to ache and her cheeks to look red and blotchy, what she knows will undoubtedly be an unpleasant sight when she catches a glimpse in the bathroom mirror later. 

“I have to go,” she says once she’s calmed down, gently breaking through Eliza’s hold on her. She feels almost numb, like she’s on autopilot; she shrugs on her jacket and walks towards the front door like her body is working on its own, leading her back outside as if to protect her. “I’m gonna take a walk.” 

“Alex,” her mom tries to say, but she shakes her head. 

“I’m not angry,” she assures her, but— isn’t she? Even a little bit? Still, she tells Eliza, “I just… I need to process.”

The air is warm and thick when she walks outside, heavy from the storm that had raged and ended in a matter of minutes, but it doesn’t suffocate her. She likes it, the aura that the west coast gives off. It helps her clear her head and feel calm as she walks, her feet leading her back to the beach, kicking up sand behind her.

It’s like she’s always one step behind everybody these days, reminiscent of the times there would be three of them in a group in town, and she’d have to linger behind in order to fit on the sidewalk. Time is flying by but Alex is stuck in the past, chained down by memories, unable to move forward.

Her mother is moving on. Hell, even _Kara_ is moving on, in a way. 

Why can’t she?

Almost like it’s a natural instinct, she finds herself calling Lena as she walks along the shore, sea foam washing over her feet before retreating every few seconds. She toes at chipped sea shells that cross her path, the wind rushing past her. 

“Well, it’s about time you called,” Lena says as greeting, huffing through the speaker. If she can tell that Alex has been crying, she doesn’t point it out. “I was starting to think you forgot about me.” 

“I could never forget about you,” Alex replies without thinking. She blushes at the words and rolls her eyes at herself. _Idiot._ “I mean— I was going to call.”

Lena just hums, not buying it. “How’s Midvale?” she questions, and then seems to take Alex’s following silence as an answer. “I see.” 

“It’s not— I just—“ She stops, bites at her lip. “Sometimes it feels like the entire world has moved on without me.” 

Lena’s quiet for a moment. Then, “Maybe it has.” 

Alex stops walking. The water that washes over her feet is cold, a stark contrast of the warm, humid air around her, and it feels like the only thing keeping her anchored. “You know you’re supposed to _reassure_ me, right?” 

“Shut up,” Lena chides. “The world _has_ moved on without you. That doesn’t mean you can’t catch up. You just got back from a war zone half a year ago, and you’re still healing from things you won’t talk about. That takes time.” 

“What if I never heal?” It’s a pathetic question, and it fills her with stifling hot shame as soon as it leaves her mouth, but it’s out there now. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Lena snaps, not unkindly, but not gentle either. “You’re going to heal because you want to heal. The only thing holding you back from recovery right now is you.” 

“Stop making sense,” Alex mutters into the phone, groaning as she plays a brief game of soccer with a loose rock in the sand. “I hate it when you make sense.” 

“No, you don’t,” Lena admonishes her affectionately. “Now go back home and talk to your mother.”

Alex doesn’t even have it in her to question how Lena knew that was the problem. 

“You’re good for me, Luthor,” she blurts out, cringing at the brief moment of silence that follows. She hates to sound clingy, or like she’s too codependent, but it doesn’t seem like Lena takes it that way. 

“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?” she teases, and the doubt and worry drains from Alex’s mind immediately. “Now go,” Lena continues, as if trying to shove her off the phone as soon as possible. “So I can fall asleep in this gigantic bed without you.” 

Alex rolls her eyes, but can’t help but ask, “You haven’t been staying in my apartment this whole time, right?” 

The silence that follows is most definitely a _yes,_ but Alex can’t exactly say she minds the fact that Lena seems to be more comfortable in her apartment than in her own penthouse. “Right,” she drags out, lips quirked up at the shuffling in the background, what’s most likely the sound of Lena shamelessly slipping under her covers and settling against the pillows. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

“Of course,” Lena confirms, and then, softly, “Be safe, you idiot.”

She hangs up before Alex even has time to get offended at her word choice.

The walk home is contemplative. Anger isn’t something new to her; she’s kept it alive within herself for years, nurtured it and fed it. A constant rumbling of _something_ under her skin, present and simmering. It was her mother she screamed at, after finding out what had happened. Eliza’s expression was somber in a way she had only seen so many times and while there was guilt, the kind that bit gently into her skin, the anger was always greater. It’s like she was born with it, the rage settled deep inside her bones, old as the earth. 

Her talk with Lena seemed to take some of the weight off her shoulders, though. She can feel the anger slipping away bit by bit as she makes her way through the neighborhood lit up by street lights, melting like wax under the sun. By the time she’s made it onto the front porch, all that’s left is the lingering feeling of guilt for blowing up.

She doesn’t fight the embrace Eliza envelopes her with as soon as the door creaks opens, the house still completely dark save for the static glow of the television in the living room. 

“I’m sorry,” she sighs out, ducking her head so that it rests against her mother’s thin shoulder. Her mom doesn’t respond, but Alex feels nimble fingers in her hair, nails scratching lightly at her scalp like Eliza used to do when she was little, and her eyes slip shut on their own accord. 

Maybe this is what it feels like to heal. Maybe this is what it feels like to start moving on. 

* * *

By the time she gets back to National City the next night, Alex’s limbs still feel heavy with leftover exhaustion. Kicking off her boots and feeling her way blindly towards the bedroom, she practically collapses in on herself in bed, immediately recognizing the familiar lump under the blankets beside her.

Alex lets her eyes slip shut, relishing in the warmth. “Good, you’re back,” Lena hums without opening her eyes, still half-asleep. “I restocked your kitchen while you were gone.” 

Alex shakes her head. There are still things she has to learn to deal with, and certain thoughts that have only grown more persistent after her trip, but for now, she breathes a sigh of relief at being home. 

“If I find even _one_ kale leaf in my fridge, I’m kicking you out.” 


End file.
